Wrong Way - Books Babb.no

No cover — Joanne McNeil: Wrong Way (Hardcover, 2023, Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Hardcover, 288 pages

English language

Published Sept. 14, 2023 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

ISBN:: 978-0-374-61066-1

(1 review)

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.

2 editions

allison reviewed Wrong Way by Joanne McNeil

make YOUR way... to the bookstore (to buy Wrong Way)

5 stars

Wrong Way is a contemplative, deliberate novel that builds by accumulation and unfolds quietly—quietly, at least, until the truly claustrophobic denouement. The marketing bills the book's subject as "AI" or the "gig economy" but it's really more basic and timeless than that: it's a book about how identity, labor, and place can't be disentangled from one another. The syntax and style of the prose are subtly radical—Joanne's direct, active voice, subject-verb-object sentences occasionally give way to jumpcut parataxis and zeugma, giving the feeling of weightlessness at the top of a rollercoaster. It's not a comedic book by any means, but there are moments of deadpan absurdity and satire that are surprisingly funny (I especially enjoyed the delicious venom directed at the "art world" and at two-faced tech bros using social justice language).

(Full disclosure: I am a friend of Joanne's and I took her writing course at SFPC, in which …

Wrong Way is a contemplative, deliberate novel that builds by accumulation and unfolds quietly—quietly, at least, until the truly claustrophobic denouement. The marketing bills the book's subject as "AI" or the "gig economy" but it's really more basic and timeless than that: it's a book about how identity, labor, and place can't be disentangled from one another. The syntax and style of the prose are subtly radical—Joanne's direct, active voice, subject-verb-object sentences occasionally give way to jumpcut parataxis and zeugma, giving the feeling of weightlessness at the top of a rollercoaster. It's not a comedic book by any means, but there are moments of deadpan absurdity and satire that are surprisingly funny (I especially enjoyed the delicious venom directed at the "art world" and at two-faced tech bros using social justice language).

(Full disclosure: I am a friend of Joanne's and I took her writing course at SFPC, in which she showed the students Jim Jarmusch's Paterson on the first day. Coincidentally, I think Jim Jarmusch would be a great director for a film adaptation of this novel!)