Customer Reviews

Girls for Breakfast

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a wonderfully-written, highly-entertaining, and often hilarious novel. Nick Park's just a kid and he's just trying to get by. And yeah, he likes girls. It's nice to see a young adult book tackle the subject of blooming masculinity head on, and Yoo skillfully weaves the issues of race, gender, and sexuality into an intelligent, humorous story. The book will make you laugh throughout, and the ending is beautiful.

A very clever and funny cover that resembles a cereal box greets readers of GIRLS FOR BREAKFAST. This witty read chronicles the story of Nick Park, who is missing his high school graduation rehearsal to think back over what led him to humiliate himself in front of a wonderful girl the night before at his Prom.

Nick is the only Korean in his white suburb, and he begins to think that his race might be the cause of his unpopularity. As he reflects over everything he has done through junior and senior high, though, he realizes that he has never been comfortable with anything about himself, and that there may be other reasons why he has trouble with girls.

Nick's stories are as funny as they are cringe-worthy, and everyone will recognize themselves in some of his embarrassing escapades. From offering fake martial arts lessons to gain friends as a boy, to trying to ignore the Korean church youth group his parents desperately want him to join, Nick has tried too hard to avoid his true self and to be like people he perceives as popular.

It all comes to a head at the Prom and it takes hours of reflection the next day for Nick to sort through what will happen next. Readers will only receive hints until the end of the book, but they will be too busy enjoying Nick's funny and ironic narration about himself.

--- Reviewed by Amy Alessio

I was pleasantly surprised by young master Yoo's book about a young Korean boy growing up in the stogy suburbs of Connecticut, going from confrontations with "those guys" to experimentation with women and sex David Yoo has done a great job with this coming of age story, it's got everything you would want in a book, from humor to drama. If you're interested in a great read, pick it up!!!

David Yoo's novel feels a little overextended: did he really have to begin the saga of Nick Park from all the way back in third grade? But in general he knows how to tell a story and capture the reader's attention right away. Nick doesn't have many Korean friends, and he's ashamed of the way his mother serves Korean kimchee with her cheeseburgers, ashamed of his dad's heavy accent. "Hey Mr Park," Mitch said. "Hello, Meech," my dad said. I flinched. Mitch and Paul laughed; they thought he was hilarious. His accent sounded more pronounced around my friends. Other Asian kids in the Korean church Nick sometimes attends call him a "banana," -- yellow on the outside, white on the inside. And yet Yoo makes Nick's struggles with his contested masculinity into a rewarding and heartwarming tale.

He's good at tennis, and that makes him a few friends. And he draws well, so he gets put in the poster club at high school--a wealthy suburb where some of his pals live in actual mansions: Paul's got an bowling alley in his basement. At the same time he is sometimes tolerated, but racist bullies make his life a hell, as when one know-nothing calls him "Long Duk Dong" after the comic exchange student from SIXTEEN CANDLES. Racial epithets fly all over the place in GIRLS FOR BREAKFAST, and there's no safe place for a boy like Nick. The girls he lusts after aren't all that interested in him, but there's always Miss January from an old issue of Playboy. She's been sitting in his closet for ten years or more, and whenever life gets tough for him, he hauls her out and starts spanking it. (In one amusing scene he looks up and finds the cat, Boris, has been watching him [...], so he pulls up his shorts and tries to distract Boris from this traumatic memory. Now, that's self-effacing!)

Apparently David Yoo had the great luck to be able to work with the late, great fiction writer Lucia Berlin, a lady who died way too soon and whose books (published by Black Sparrow and other midrange presses) are pretty much out of print, and who stands the risk of being forgotten. I think Lucia Berlin, one of the finest writers in recent memory, would have been proud of Woo her student; he shares something of her intense interest in humanity, her gifts of penetrating dialogue and concrete observation, and quite a lot of her big-hearted humor, the laugh that could warm one's bones. I expect that GIRLS FOR BREAKFAST, even with its occasional lapses in taste, and its infrequent longueurs, introduces us to a masterful voice.

I just finished Yoo's "Girls for Breakfast". I really don't like spoilers, so I won't include any here. The narrator of the novel,Nick, is soooo funny, that I couldn't put it down and finished it in a couple of sittings. Nick wants it all with typical teen bravado, but is also incredibly insecure. I read a fair bit of YA lit. (I'm a teacher), and I was really grateful that Yoo doesn't have some big moment of clarity where the character figures out all his problems and does the right thing at just the right time(this ruins many similar books). Instead, his narrator is just a big ball of raging hormones and confusion and contradictions. I'd say the only downside of this novel is all the pop culture allusions. They had me dying from laughter from the first couple of pages ("Kodiak Long Cut bear"), but they might be confusing to a 16 year old who didn't grow up in the 80's. Overall, hilarious and painfully honest. I would definitely recommend this to smart teens.

I'm not a teen, but just feel like one, reading this excellent semi-autobiographical fiction. Funny and touching, reminiscent of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers, but for teens. This quick paced books will make you laugh, grimace in embarrassment and shared angst, and root, root, root for Nick.

Nick Park is the only Korean American youth growing up in a white suburb. He is good at sports, but not popular and he has problems with girls, to say the least. He has low self-esteem and tries to cover it up by going out of his way to get attention. In fact the book starts out with Nick missing his graduation rehearsal, because he made a jerk of himself in front of a girl at the prom.

He blams the fact that he's Korean for his problems when really his problems lie within himself. He wants to belong, to be popular, but he makes it difficult for others to get to know him with his embarrassing antics. This is at times a shocking book and at other times very funny. David Yoo has somehow put a bit of all of us in Nick Park, making him a very real character who you will be thinking about long after you finish this book. I just loved it.

I started reading GIRLS FOR BREAKFAST on the half-hour bus ride home, and I smirked all the way there. There's so much wicked humor in this book. I'm not Korean and I'm certainly not a guy, but I totally identified with Nick Park. He's both flawed and sympathetic. I laughed hard at his childhood memories of teaching fake martial arts to his friends, his mom's horrible cooking, and his incredibly embarrassing moments around girls and pretty much everyone else. Many times I was smiling and sighing, "Poor guy." Nick manages to come across both awkward and sweet. He seems real enough that I might run into him one day. I very much recommend this book.

Hot!!! And so is his writing. Hot, hot, hot. There's few literary achievments that can boast of appealing to young adults and adults alike. Caustic, sardonic, and ultimately true, it's all part of this nutritious breakfast.