WELCOME TO MY PLANET

Minnesota-bred Olson debuts with a blistering lampoon of Gen-X angst.

Not only does heroine Shannon Olson have the same name as the author, but their mothers are both named Flo. Shannon, 31, who’s been in therapy for five years, has a mind-numbing job testing software for an upstart computer company in the Minneapolis suburbs—given her habit of coming in late and taking long lunches she can’t understand why the boss doesn’t fire her—and she’s tired of her oversexed, often-unemployed, video game–playing boyfriend. She’s so tired of him, in fact, that she never refers to him by name but simply as “my boyfriend.” Everybody on Love Boat found someone, she whines to her acerbic and impatient therapist, so why can’t she? Eventually, Shannon trades in her boring job for a university assistantship and her slacker boyfriend for a ruggedly handsome Italian studying architecture. This new boyfriend—he’s got a name, Michael—ambitious and attentive, is a big improvement over the old one—but, alas, Shannon quickly develops the same ambivalence toward him. The one thing Shannon can’t trade in is her mother. She loathes her mother’s small-town, doctor’s-wife life, yet she envies her ability to make lemonade from the many lemons tossed her way. “You have to make her seem small and ridiculous in order to feel good about yourself,” her therapist scolds. But try as she might, Shannon simply can’t buck her clinical depression. She wonders, in fact, whether depression may not be the correct biological response to living in America. Only when her mother develops a tumor does she come close to taking responsibility for her inner demons.

Shannon never does have the life-altering experience or emotional epiphany you’d like, and the dialogue often resembles sitcom banter. Still, Olson has scored a direct hit on her generation’s inability to quit the bellyaching and get on with it.