(287 pages)
In Welcome to My Planet, the fictional Shannon Olson--who shares her creator's name--is witty but confused, whip-smart but unable to fully release her ties to bad boyfriends, childhood obsessions, and the "gassy expanse" of marginal jobs. With the help of a therapist known only as the counselor, this almost 30-year-old Midwestern neurotic gamely tries to steer her way past credit-card-fueled Target binges and a too close relationship with her mother, Flo, and to slowly inch toward the elusive land of adulthood. Comparisons to the charming neurotics found in Bridget Jones's Diary and The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing are inevitable, but beside the point: Shannon is less brittle, less self-consciously hip than those postmodern heroines. Contemplating living on her own again after a stint with her parents, she whines to the counselor, "I've never really lived anywhere else. What if I never find anyone? I may as well go out and adopt a bunch of cats and start wearing macramé ponchos."
Olson's debut easily pulls us in with a conversational, seemingly unadorned style that camouflages her well-crafted narrative technique as she moves back and forth in time. With her retro and up-to-the-minute pop-culture references to The Love Boat, grieving conferences, Prozac, Oprah, bachelorette parties, and the ravages of graduate school (where Babe the Gallant Pig is a "text"), the author clearly knows her target audience. Welcome to My Planet is an almost perfect coming-of-age story for an era in which public life, jazzed by lightning technological and commercial changes, leapfrogs away while emotional adolescence strangely extends into our 30s.
I had a really hard time getting into this, it was more like lots of disjointed little stories than a nice flowing novel. I did find myself chuckling in parts and it was worth the read, just not written in a style I enjoy.
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