Review by Booklist Review
In her smart debut novel, McNeil uses one woman's story to explore the complicated relationship between technology and labor. Stuck in an endless trap of temp jobs and without savings or a home of her own, Teresa eagerly signs up to work for a massive tech company, AllOver, that is launching a new fleet of driverless cars. Like most tech companies, their vision hasn't yet attained reality, so Teresa's job as a "seer" has her driving from a tiny nest hidden atop the car. Teresa struggles to reconcile AllOver's lies about their product with the financial stability the job provides. McNeil brings a nuanced, grounded approach to speculative fiction; Teresa's world is not the one we live in, but it is also not so radically different. Like many actual people, Teresa struggles to find stable work with a livable wage as corporations push for "technological advancement," while misleading the public about their practices and products. By creating a predicament for her protagonist that could soon resemble ones we'll face, McNeil creates a compelling examination of work and our relationship to it.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Nov.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A woman with a long history of temporary employment finds her latest gig as a driver of a new, supposedly driverless vehicle. "This could be a good job," Teresa thinks aboard the shuttle bus taking her and 50 fellow trainees from Boston's South Station to the gleaming suburban headquarters of AllOver, an "experience company" that claims to "shape the digital economy to fit neighborhood-centric needs." She's had plenty of jobs to compare it with; McNeil's debut novel opens with Teresa swimming laps at a local Y while she recalls the many jobs she's had and lost for one reason or another over several decades. At 48, living at home with her mother because she can't afford her own place, all she hopes for is a decent paycheck. She is bemused but doesn't really care that she will be hidden inside a "working prototype" that AllOver is promoting and putting on the road as an actual self-driving car. This seems like a possible setup for a thriller exposing a sinister corporation with some evil plan, but the insufferably woke AllOver never appears to be more than just another profit-centered business pretending to care about customers and employees. McNeil, author of a well-regarded critical history of the Internet (Lurking: How a Person Became a User, 2020), focuses here on America's disorienting transition from an industrial to a service economy and its consequences for working people. Teresa is her case study, and the major flaw in this sharply observed, extremely well-written novel is that we are more than halfway through it before readers learn why this obviously intelligent woman is so passive and has such minimal expectations. When we do, it supplements McNeil's powerful portrait of an unequal economy with a biting example of class privilege as an instrument of upward employment mobility. Unfortunately, the novel has been permeated for so long with Teresa's alienated, apathetic personality that it never develops narrative momentum, and a dramatic final event leads to a painfully ironic last line rather than closure. Strong, stinging social observation that doesn't entirely work as fiction. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
