Wrong Way
A Novel
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Named a Best Book of 2023 by the New Yorker and one of the Top 20 Best Books of 2023 by Esquire magazine.
For years, Teresa has passed from one job to the next, settling into long stretches of time, struggling to build her career in any field or unstick herself from an endless cycle of labor. The dreaded move from one gig to another is starting to feel unbearable. When a recruiter connects her with a contract position at AllOver, it appears to check all her prerequisites for a “good” job. It’s a fintech corporation with progressive hiring policies and a social justice-minded mission statement. Their new service for premium members: a functional fleet of driverless cars. The future of transportation. As her new-hire orientation reveals, the distance between AllOver’s claims and its actions is wide, but the lure of financial stability and a flexible schedule is enough to keep Teresa driving forward.
Joanne McNeil, who often reports on how the human experience intersects with labor and technology brings blazing compassion and criticism to Wrong Way, examining the treacherous gaps between the working and middle classes wrought by the age of AI. Within these divides, McNeil turns the unsaid into the unignorable, and captures the existential perils imposed by a nonstop, full-service gig economy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McNeil (Lurking) portrays the ruthlessness of the gig economy in her intimate debut novel. Teresa, 48, has measured her life by her jobs. In her teenage years, she was a department store clerk. Since then, she's been a bartender, a bank teller, and more. Recently, however, she's stalled out with a string of unreliable temp jobs. Now, she sleeps on a daybed in a small rural home with her mom. She becomes hopeful that her life will turn around after she's recruited to work at giant tech company AllOver, whose new rideshare service features driverless cars—or so the public is led to believe. In a mordant twist, it turns out the cars are driven by contractors like Teresa, who operate the vehicle from a secret compartment. As Teresa settles into this bizarre new role, she's caught between her need for stability and her desire to be recognized for her work. More and more, she loses herself to the memories of past jobs and lost relationships. McNeil skewers the company's facile corporate promises ("We bridge humanity and enterprise; we shape the digital economy to fit neighborhood-centric needs"), and the satire is all the more cutting when contrasted with the all-too-human story of Teresa. A warm beating heart drives this smart and timely tale.
