The Circle

by Dave Eggers

The Circle is the exhilarating new novel from Dave Eggers, bestselling author of A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award.

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.

Praise for A Hologram for the King:

'A comic but deeply affecting tale about one man's travails that also provides a bright, digital snapshot of our times' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

'Impressive, startling, compelling. Proves how staggering a genius Eggers can be' Independent

'Hugely impressive. Why can't British novelists tell a tale as crisply as Dave Eggers? Sets off at a cracking pace and never lets up' Mail on Sunday

Dave Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco. He is the author of seven previous books, including A Hologram for the King (finalist for the National Book Award 2012), Zeitoun (winner of the American Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize) and What is the What, which was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award and won France's Prix Médicis.

• ISBN10: 0241146496
• ISBN13: 9780241146491
• Publish Date: 10 October 2013 (first published 1 January 2013)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 3 April 2014
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Hamish Hamilton Ltd
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 512
• Language: English

Reviews

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog: www.thepunktheory.wordpress.com

David Eggers wrote a fascinating and dark novel that hits the spot. He brings up so many ideas and even if some of them may sound a bit weird or ridiculous at first, I am convinced that the world he pictures isn't far away. What he mentions feels very credible which is exactly why this very Orwellian story is so scary.
While is ideas are highly intriguing, his characters are not. Especially Mae, the main character, seems to be incapable of forming a single (critical) thought of her own. She annoyed me just so much, I wanted to smack her and shake her. I understand that the only way for the story to work like this is a characters like hers, but still - Eggers had me rolling my eyes at her several times. Let's be honest, not everything makes sense to 100% but it's still a very good book.

[mrs_mander_reads]

This was definitely an odd read. I sped through the first 3/4, and then found myself a little bored. I'm intrigued by the basis of the plot, and feel like this type of issue is one that we will eventually come into contact with. I finished the book, and was put off by the ending. I feel like Mae could have maybe been the catalyst for safe change, but oh well.

[remo]

Novela distópica sobre la falta de privacidad a la que conducen los grandes gigantes de internet que cada vez quieren, necesitan y usan más datos sobre nosotros. La idea de partida es buena, qué pasaría si una única compañía tuviera desde nuestros registros bancarios a nuesras pruebas de ADN pasando por nuestras redes sociales, nuestro correo electrónico y nuestro sistema operativo. Sin embargo, el libro es malo. La protagonista es un personaje inane que solo está para que le pasen cosas. Sus amigos son caricaturas o, a lo sumo, estereotipos. No hay manera de entender las motivaciones de nadie en la novela salvo algún secundario. Mal llevada, mal escrita. Muy poco interesante aunque el tema tiene mucho potencial.

[laurie]

The premise of this book scared the ever-loving crap out of me. The idea of my entire life out there on the web for people to watch is literally my worst nightmare. And then, to have them be able to comment and whine if I don’t react to their comments fast enough? Ugh. So, I thought this book would be delectably creepy and make a huge statement about how connected and out there for display we all are and the privacy issues this causes.

Instead, Mae was just a moron. She did things because everyone told her to, but I had no idea how she felt about what was going on. How did she feel when her transparency caused the death of a friend? When she embarrassed her parents? What would make her continue to have sex with a guy who flat out didn’t satisfy her and then lie about how great it was when she got nothing else from the relationship? I wanted the insight into the whys and how it felts, and instead it was a wishy washy meander without a point.

And, despite the great cast, don’t bother with the movie either. It was even more wishy washy. (But more funny Tom Hanks. I miss him. I still maintain that Joe vs the Volcan was vastly underrated.)

See this review and others on my blog.

[ross91]

READ.THIS.BOOK.
PLEASE.

[gmcgregor]

In Dave Eggers' The Circle, we're ever-so-slightly in the future, and one large umbrella company has taken over most of what happens on the internet: all your social media and e-commerce goes through a TruYou profile, a product of The Circle. When Mae Holland, a recent graduate of an East Coast private liberal arts school who grew up in working class California, is able to get a job at The Circle through her friend Annie, she's thrilled. The sprawling and luxurious Bay Area campus is beyond her wildest dreams and the company is at the forefront of every breaking new development in internet technology. She's increasingly drawn into the world of The Circle as it encroaches further and further into formerly private arenas of life, and can't understand her family and friends who resist the shifting landscape of the world.

Theoretically, this is a really good book, a modern 1984. When you hear about things like the lawsuit in Spain about the right to be forgotten, it really makes you think about how deeply the internet has enmeshed itself in our lives. The Circle illustrates how slippery the slope could be for it to completely invade all aspects of our existence...microchipping and GPS tracking children to prevent kidnapping, very small constantly streaming webcams to open up closed regimes, politicians livestreaming their professional duties to make government transparent. All of these things sound like they're positive developments on the surface, but it creates a culture of constant surveillance.

Where the book fails, though, is the execution. Mae (short for Maebelline, which I thought was a nifty way to communicate what kind of people her parents were without having to spell anything out) is obviously meant to be an audience-insert character, like Twilight's Bella. But it doesn't work here to the extent it works for Twilight...the characteristics Mae is given, ambition and a certain amount of selfishness, render her mostly unpleasant. She needs to be a compelling character to have us follow her down the proverbial rabbit hole, but she has no real personality. She seems close to her family in the beginning, but drafts away from them easily and without apparent regret. She has "relationships" with peers like Annie and her ex-boyfriend Mercer, but we're not given any sense of history or any reason to believe that she's actually emotionally connected to other people. The writing is clunky, with awkward phrasing all over the place. It's extra disappointing because the ideas behind the book are there, and if it had been rendered better it could have been amazing. I understand why it flopped, and I wouldn't recommend it.

Ik heb echt geen idee wat ik hiervan moet denken. Interessant onderwerp? Absoluut. Maar Mae was zo irritant, naïef en makkelijk, dat het onnatuurlijk overkwam.
Het zet je wel aan het denken...

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

If Facebook and Google were to get married, The Circle would be their direct result of their procreation. The Circle takes the social aspects (and lack of privacy) of Facebook and combines it with the innovation of Google to create a dominant social media platform. Their success was a result of TruYou, a tool that requires people to use their real identity to sign up (including their social security number making it impossible for anyone outside of the US to sign up), many web based companies jumped on board with this innovation, wanting direct access to real data. The effect of TruYou saw the end of internet trolling, identity theft and so much more.

Mae Holland is a woman in her early 20’s that has just landed a job with the Circle thanks to her friend Annie. While she has to start in Customer Experience, a place well below her qualifications the idea of working at the Circle was enough for her. The offices (or campus) of the Circle mimic that of Google, and Mae founds that this is the place to work; everyone is friendly and she will be on the fast track to a promotion in no time. However the Circle; while it demands transparency (hiding nothing from the public) in everything they do, their attempt to close the circle (their mission statement) will result in complete control over everything. Secrets Are Lies, Privacy Is Theft.

Let’s face it, Dave Eggers’ The Circle is less of a social satire and more a horrifying prophecy of the direction social media is going. They days where people can be a curator of their lives online are fast ending and every part of our lives will be accessible. This may have some positive effects in life but when one company or person has too much power, human rights tend to take a back seat. Do people see this? Are they aware just how much of their information is being shared or sold? The Circle forces the readers to ask these questions and take a deeper look what is happening online.

The Circle serves more as a motif; even a homage to Dante if you will. Dave Eggers is the Virgil of this story and both Mae and the readers travel deeper into the circles of hell. Mae learns just much of a tyrant the Circle is, while the reader has a look at social media. While I see this as a homage to Inferno, this totalitarian nightmare is obviously influenced by Nineteen Eighty-Four (as most dystopian novel are) more than anything else. Eggers, like Orwell wants to look at society and see the direction we are heading.

The Circle is headed by the “Three Wise Men” each of them with their own ideas for the direction of the company. These three men seem to be modelled after real life innovators; Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and Julian Assange. I’m not going to go into the effects three big personalities would have on a company, but I’m sure you can imagine. I’m not going to go too much further into the plot or themes but with a company slogan like “All that happens must be known”, I probably don’t need to spell it out.

This is my first Dave Eggers novel and I’ve often heard that this is one of his weaker novels, however I think this was a perfect place to start for me. I found this dystopian satire to be directly influenced by the works of Jonathan Swift and George Orwell. I have no idea what Eggers other novels are like but I’m convinced to read more; even if they are not social satires. I loved how he incorporated pop-culture into the novel but I worry that this will mean it won’t age well, so you might want to pick this one up soon.

I have been reading novels that critique society but the majority have been classics, so it is nice to step into a modern day setting and see how the age of high-tech innovation and technoconsumerism could be harmful. I see some mixed reactions to this novel and I can understand that, my only hope is that people are understanding satire and are not marking it down for that. Of course I am a big fan of satire and will always be preaching about its value within literature. I found The Circle to be a very impressive novel and it did a great job at critiquing society, I hope people will give it a chance but I suspect this book will be a popular pick. I would like to do this one as part of a book club.

This review originally appeared on my blog: http://literary-exploration.com/2014/10/17/the-circle-by-dave-eggers/