- Title: The Circle
- Author: Dave Eggers
- Where to buy: Amazon
- Genre: Dystopian, Contemporary Fiction
- Would I recommend: This book has left me unsettled. I’m not sure I can say I enjoyed it. But it’s certainly thought-provoking, and I think more people should read it.
Synopsis:
“A bestselling dystopian novel that tackles surveillance, privacy and the frightening intrusions of technology in our lives—a “compulsively readable parable for the 21st century” (Vanity Fair).
When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.
As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO.
Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.
What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.
When Mae Holland is hired in a Customer Experience (or CE) role at The Circle, thanks to her college friend Annie, she cannot believe her good fortune. It’s like a dream come true. The campus (that’s what they call it) contains everything anyone could want. Food, drink, entertainment, culture, workout space, a place to lay your head at night. If you want it, The Circle can provide it. They’re the hottest thing in the world, after all. The ideas and innovations are constantly rolling, and their systems and products are making things so much better. The goal: to know everyone and everything. The Circle’s philosophy is that everything can be known and measured and tracked and shared, and they’re all just one big, happy community. They want to know you. They want to know everything.
The gorgeous art and architecture, the chic restaurants, the beautiful landscaping, the whole place is just stunning. There’s always a good concert or performance or party to go to, and since everything is so great there, employees are encouraged to stay. Engage. Get to know one another. And they can even put Mae’s parents on the company’s health insurance plan, which is great since her father is struggling with multiple sclerosis and his insurance just stopped covering his treatment. But at what cost all this connectivity? Everything is measured – work performance, health information, what events you attend, what you eat, who you talk to. Everyone is an influencer, sharing thoughts and comments on, well, everything. As The Circle’s new rising star, Mae is pulled up the ranks, even surpassing Annie, drawn further and further in to the web of interconnectivity. Then a strange encounter with someone who claims to be a coworker but can’t be identified or located on the vast company social network leaves Mae unsettled, but will it change how she sees The Circle?
The Circle weighs in at 497 pages. I read it in a 24-hour period. Not because it’s fantastically written prose – it isn’t. (It’s not bad, and I didn’t clock a bunch of missed typos, but it isn’t a towering work of literary genius.) Not because the characters are so wonderfully drawn and fleshed out – they aren’t always. No, I read it because the picture it paints is compelling and frightening and kind of makes me want to throw up.
Mae sees her new job as the best thing ever. She never wants to work anywhere else. Eventually, she never wants to be anywhere else. At first, the connectivity feels a little intrusive, but all in the name of progress and doing a good job, right? Watching Mae get pulled deeper into the web that is The Circle made me think of putting a frog into a pot of water. If you put the frog into the water when it’s already boiling, it’ll jump out, because duh, boiling water is hot. But if you put the frog in room temperature water and gradually heat it up, it doesn’t realize it’s being boiled alive. For every connection Mae agreed to, her higher-ups came up with three more. And it was all explained so rationally, so sensibly, so earnestly. We just want to make things better. How could anyone in their right mind refuse?
Soon she’s spending her days and nights making sure she hits all the right social contacts (and there are many to make). Has she posted enough? Shared enough? Documented her presence at the right social functions? Sent out enough zings and likes and frowns? At one point, she’s called on the carpet for having the audacity to go out kayaking at night, by herself, without once sharing or posting a photo or talking about her experience so that others can be part of it. She’s basically shamed for not making every aspect of her life available to everyone at all times. And she herself speaks the words: “SECRETS ARE LIES.” “SHARING IS CARING.” “PRIVACY IS THEFT.” Eventually, she ends up wearing a camera all day, every day, so she can be “transparent,” “clear,” available. It finally seems like her job provides no real value except to the people at the top of this dysfunctional food chain, because all she’s doing is smiling and waving and promoting things to others. And the people in power keep coming up with new ways to control, from child tracking to “open and honest” government to being able to ID criminals on the run through the sprawling social network. Running everything – finances, health, voting, identity, past, present, future – through The Circle. Always in the name of safety, accountability, security, Making Things Better.
Mae’s former boyfriend, Mercer, tries to be a voice of reason in her life. He tries to remind her who she was before all this encircling started. But it doesn’t reach her. Even her parents telling her the constant connectivity and interaction required for their health insurance is taking more time and energy than they have doesn’t get through. She can’t understand why people outside The Circle don’t appreciate her efforts to connect them to everything, from sharing Mercer’s business with a waiting world (because he could do so much more with himself if he’d just try) “helping” Annie heal by sharing what should be a private hurt with a network of millions (because no one should suffer in solitude, you know).
This is a cautionary tale. It is what our world could be. Maybe we’re already close enough to it that there’s no backing away. The book was written in 2013. It’s not new. But Eggers sure paints a picture that sounds like what our current situation could become. People posting everything on social media, sharing things for reactions that maybe shouldn’t be shared with the world, and then freaking out when they don’t get the likes and loves and shares they hoped for. This book was full of needy people, desperate for the affirmation they could receive from a huge network. It was like a world of angsty preteens, constantly needing affirmation, upset because someone hasn’t talked to me that day and so they must not like me anymore and my whole world is ending. That’s the thought process Mae goes through when a question, “Is Mae Holland awesome or what?” is asked to test yet another new product. Three hundred sixty-eight out of ten thousand people responded with a frown, and she moves rapidly from being somewhat bothered about it to being certain those three hundred sixty-eight people hate her and want her and her family dead. The mental gymnastics were ridiculous and exhausting, and can’t people be like that over social media?
There were a couple of explicit sex scenes in the book. I’m not a fan of on-page spice, but here, the romance isn’t the issue. There are two different men, and Mae vacillates between almost insta-love and then nearly hate for both. It serves to illustrate her fickleness, her desire and ability to go along with what seems most expedient at the time. Because of this, I wouldn’t share it with my high school English students, but I would share excerpts. This is a book young people should read and decide if it depicts the kind of world they really want. If not, what can they do to keep it from becoming a reality?
Four stars, because it may not be the best writing ever, but it is a chewy, thought-provoking story that inspires deep feelings. And isn’t that what good stories do, make us think about the world around us? Safety is an illusion. Security is temporary. How much are we willing to sacrifice for something that is never promised and never can be?
