Eighteen-year-old Jane is pregnant, grieving her alcoholic father’s recent death, and working as a pizza delivery driver in suburban Los Angeles. She avoids her supportive mother and devoted boyfriend, choosing instead to fixate on Jenny, a stay-at-home mother who orders a weekly pepperoni pizza topped with pickles for her young son. This obsession quickly spirals into an intense, intrusive friendship as Jane neglects her own impending motherhood to insert herself into Jenny’s messy domestic life, seeking a distraction from her fear of repeating her family’s cycles of addiction and abandonment.
This novel is for readers who prefer messy, unlikable protagonists and realistic depictions of late-adolescent stagnation. Those interested in the specific pressures of early pregnancy and generational trauma will find an honest look at how grief and fear manifest as avoidance. The reader walks away with a blunt perspective on the difficulty of outrunning one's heritage and the realization that strangers cannot provide the emotional salvation they seem to promise. It is an account of the uncomfortable gap between being a child and becoming a parent.
Inward-looking; an easy read.
Best for readers like The Empathetic Explorer. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2020
- Language
- EN
