Welcome to My Planet: Where English Is Sometimes Spoken

The protagonist of this excellent debut novel has much in common with its author: they share the same name, they're both in their early 30s, live in Minnesota and have a mother named Flo. In funny, self-conscious prose, Olson chronicles her heroine's life between ages 25 and 30. Shannon goes to therapy, frets about her credit card debt and her boyfriend Michael's obsessive need to organize his time, slogs away at an unsatisfying job at a software company and eventually decides to move back into her parents' home. The neurotic middle child between her (married) brother and her (married) sister, Shannon chats endearingly and self-deprecatingly about her anxieties and her complicated relationship with Flo. Having grown up watching Love Boat on TV, Shannon admits she's absorbed the fantasy of old-fashioned, tidy love: ""All my life, for as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be married. I'm not sure why. I guess I just thought that that's when my life would start."" But Shannon never quite faces her feelings. She's more likely to produce a witty pun than tell her mother she loves her. Even when Flo is hospitalized for surgery, Shannon copes with the crisis with humor, a strategy she's learned from her wisecracking mom. Getting older, feeling aimless, Shannon enrolls in grad school, cuts her hours at work and moves in with Michael. When their affair hits troubled waters, she finally turns to Flo for advice and learns that Flo views her own marriage as a failure. Olson's premise is hardly original in a market flooded with sassy young women's fiction, but she has a realistic voice readers can relate to, and, unlike others in the genre, she isn't trying to be edgy and hip. The book meanders but is honest and compelling; the ordinary woman's search for self is grounded sturdily in the resilient, charming mother/daughter relationship at the novel's heart. Agent, Gloria Loomis. 10-city author tour. (June)