Olson finally got around to the bowling in the last few pages. Which is good because I’m the kind of dweeb who always gets metaphors and allegories mixed up. And satire and farce, for that matter, which have nothing to do with this book, except that it is funny. Very funny in places. Snort-milk-out-of-your-nose funny.

And sad. And touching. And thought-provoking.

Shannon Olson and her friend Adam are two of the last living single people on the face of the earth. Or at least that’s the way it feels in the midst of friends who are getting married, making babies, and moving out of John Dillinger’s old St. Paul apartment into the ‘burbs. With a hilarious Greek chorus of her parents, group-therapy members, and married friends, Olson explores what it means to find your ever-after one true (and whether such an animal even exists) and what to do if your one true love is possible the other single guy who has been hanging around all along.

I’m about halfway through - OK, 3/4 of the way through and so far not one sign of bowling. Not a paragraph - not a sentence—not even a word. Except in the title, of course. And it has taken me this long to realize that, even though this is styled as a novel, the author actually named the lead character, whose story she tells in the first person, after herself. Which is a very gutsy thing for a writer to do and quite unlike most writers I’ve read. Except of course for those writers who are writing straight autobiographies. Which, interestingly enough, usually contain probably as much fiction as this book does, if not more. But I digress.

So far I like this book. It is funny and thought-provoking and a very good read.

And Shannon Olson might well be the Bridget Jones of Minnesota. I’ve never been to Minnesota, but if all the people who live there are as quirky, individual, and compelling as the people in this book, I think it’s about high time I hightailed it up there and found out.