BROCKTON — Two-time published author Joanne McNeil grew up in Brockton. Her 2023 novel “Wrong Way” draws heavily upon the working-class community in which she spent her childhood.
McNeil’s 288-page speculative fiction novel follows Theresa, a 48-year-old woman who takes a job at a large tech company headquartered in Stoughton. As the fictional tech conglomerate prepares to launch a fleet of supposedly self-driving cars, Theresa realizes that the technology is not as it’s advertised to be.
While exploring the future of technology and AI, McNeil simultaneously explores the intricacies of everyday life as a working-class individual on the South Shore — a community that she knows all too well.
‘Wrong Way’
McNeil published “Wrong Way” on Nov. 14, 2023. Since then, it’s made the New Yorker’s best books of 2023, Esquire’s top 20 books of 2023 and book club pick, and the Los Angeles Time’s best tech books.
“With its corporate machinations, creepy secrets, and low-ranking Everywoman protagonist, the novel seems, at first, like a standard-issue techno-thriller. But, just as the CR’s futuristic façade conceals something distinctly less high-tech, “Wrong Way” reveals itself to be something with a much lower heart rate: a leisurely novel of day-in, day-out gig work in the greater Boston area,” the New Yorker wrote of “Wrong Way” in their best books of 2023. “The most memorable passages are not about self-driving cars but about other humans, and what it means to share a world with them.”
For McNeil, writing about the intricacies of a working-class individual wasn’t a far stretch from reality.
An author with roots in Brockton
McNeil grew up in Brockton and attended the Brockton Public Schools for elementary, middle, and high school. Since graduation, she’s lived in New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, and now resides in Los Angeles — but she’s never forgotten her community or her Brockton roots.
“It’s the foundation of who I am as a writer,” she said of growing up in Brockton. “Brockton is a working-class community and I think there’s something very nice about the solidarity of a community where everyone knows what it’s like to work,” she said.
McNeil credits her time in Brockton for giving her the unique ability to write about the working class in an accurate and respectful way. “As a writer, I don’t regularly meet people who went to public schools like I did, who grew up in working class communities. They tend to be very homogenous in terms of class backgrounds,” McNeil said. “I feel like I was very privileged to go to a high school where it was so diverse. I got to meet so many people — people of color and people who might have been recent immigrants from places like Cape Verde or from Portugal.”
In “Wrong Way”, McNeil chooses to write about the negative effects of big tech through the eyes of a working-class main character. “That was very important to me because I wanted to show working class communities as I’ve known them. As people who are intellectually curious, who are engaging in the world, who read a lot, as opposed to a stereotype,” she said.
Advice to Brockton students, from a published author
“I think a lot about how to build opportunities for people who might be outside of the typical kind of career path to being a writer. As frustrating as the internet can be, it’s also a space that writers can share their work and be discovered and that’s what happened for me,” McNeil said.
For 15 years, McNeil wrote and published her own blog covering technology before editors in New York reached out to her, thus starting her professional writing career.
McNeil also advises students to take advantage of Brockton’s public libraries. “We are lucky to have a terrific library system with interlibrary loans. If there is a book that catches your interest, read it with a fresh mind and be very conscientious of what you think the author intended with the work.”
Where can I buy “Wrong Way”?
“Wrong Way” is currently being sold at independent bookstores like An Unlikely Story in Plainville and Porter Square Books in Cambridge. It’s also being sold at Barnes and Noble and online on Amazon.
What’s next for McNeil?
McNeil is currently working on her second nonfiction book called “Too Early for the Future” about the practice and history of speculating on the future.
Her first nonfiction book “Lurking” was published in 2020 and covers the history of the internet from the perspective of the user.
Follow McNeil and her career through her website and on X.
