David Yoo’s terrific debut novel, Girls for Breakfast, is being marketed “for young readers,” but I really don’t see why. References to the TV mini-series “V,” Echo and the Bunnymen, Max Headroom and “Electric Boogaloo” (yes, you older folk, I am referring to the sequel to the classic film “Breakin’”) had this 30-something reviewer wondering how young readers would catch on. Unless the young whippersnappers have been watching episodes of VH1’s “I Love the ’80s Strikes Back” with all the devotion of a true believer, this book is for the generation who remembers when Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” ruled the world, and Phil Collins and Heart were consistently in the Top 10.

But though it’s a blast from the past, there is also something heartwarmingly universal about Girls for Breakfast. A coming-of-age story reminiscent of Nick Hornby’s About a Boy, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Sue Townshend’s hilarious Adrian Mole diaries with a touch of David Sedaris, Girls for Breakfast is the first book that I’ve ever reviewed for KoreAm that had me repeatedly bursting out with laughter in public. And in keeping with the novel’s irreverent tone: I laughed so hard soda came out of my nose.

Girls For Breakfast by David Yoo (Delacorte Press Books, 304 pages).

The book begins on Nick Park’s high school graduation day. Nick is a sarcastic, witty Korean American teen who has been on an elusive quest for popularity and female companionship in the all-white suburb of Renfield, Conn. After many failures that overshadow his one success with a girlfriend, a classmate named Maggie whom he has just lost, Nick ruefully reflects upon his past: “The fact is, the last ten years have been a complete disaster. I’ve been dying to be in a serious relationship with a beautiful girl since I was nine years old, before I even knew Maggie existed. But I’ve really just been dying to feel like I’m the same as everyone else.”

The novel then flashes back to the past decade of Nick’s young life, an attempt to figure out how he became, in his words, “the ambivalent monster than I am today.” You see, Nick Park loves girls. From a very early age, girls are the end-all and be-all of his existence. But it isn’t until the fifth grade that Nick realizes why he isn’t popular and why the chicks don’t dig him: He’s been “publicly outed” as a Korean.

Yoo takes a hilarious, witty look at growing up in all-white suburbia through the eyes of the immensely likeable Nick. For example, Nick, as a third-grader, quickly learns that he can make friends by pretending to know kung fu, even offering to teach two or three of his gullible classmates. The artifice is so effective that Nick even believes himself: “As the weeks passed, I started to seriously consider the possibility that I was a born kung fu master. The nobility of this mission grew inside me and I felt humbled by my own presence. My pupils called me Sensei Park, and I referred to them as dojokill, real fast and gutteral, which I told them was Korean for ‘kung fu student.’”