The Circle by Dave Eggers - A Book Review

The Circle by Dave Egger’s is a novel based in a not-too-distant future.  The Circle is a social network type company like Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, only on steroids.  It was started by Tyler (Ty) Gospodino, a young wonder boy visionary.  However, being socially awkward, he hires Eamon Bailey and Tom Stenton to be the public face of the privately held company.  Together, they are known as the Three Wise Men.

    

The book begins with Mae Holland, a young 20-something year old woman, arriving for her first day on the job.  Her friend and old college roommate Annie, who is already one of The Circle’s top 40, provided her the opportunity.  A tour of the campus is the first thing on the agenda.  It’s a huge workplace made of glass and steel and stone.  It houses many glass buildings, a huge fountain, a day care center, eateries, several stores, medical facilities, and the grassy outdoor grounds contain an amphitheater, tennis and volleyball courts.  Nightly, well known artists, musicians and performers in all realms flock to entertain the employees as food and drinks flow freely.  With The Circle's heavy social requirements, there are dorm rooms provided to crash in at night or to simply move into if one chooses to live on campus.

After receiving a new company laptop and iPhone, all of the information on Mae's personal devices is transferred to the company equipment with the assurance that her personal information has been stored in the cloud and the appliances are no longer needed and should be should be donated to the company for recycling.  This personal invasion of privacy didn’t set well with me and I knew we were headed down a rabbit hole into a place where I personally, would not want to go.  However, intrigued with the story, I stayed the course and continued reading.

Mae begins her life at The Circle in Customer Experience (a new term for customer service), providing boilerplate answers to client questions and complaints.  She learns that her performance is tabulated after every interaction and her ratings are displayed on a second computer screen for all those employed at The Circle to view.  Soon, a third computer screen arrives, this one showing employee social media, comments and invitations to campus activities, and all things campus related.  This screen too, has performance ratios attached that are computed and listed on the second screen.  A fourth screen is then added to show her social status outside the campus.  As the story builds, the screens and their functions continue to increase.

Thinking through this scenario and the expectations placed on each employee of the firm was exhausting.  We are simply not wired this way.  Mae struggles at first but soon her ego gets in her way and she is moving forward, increasing her numbers and building a high profile reputation at The Circle.  The outside world, including her parents, who live an hours’ drive away, begin to take a back seat.  When she learns that there is a fight ensuing with the health care insurance over her father’s needs in treating his MS, Mae secures insurance through The Circle to help them.  Though the coverage is great, the invasion of privacy is not.  Also outside The Circle's reach is an old boyfriend, Mercer, who lives near and remains friends with her parents.  He does not like the direction Mae is headed and is extremely vocal with his opinions.  With both her parents and Mercer seemingly unappreciative of Mae's new job and her influence therein, she returns to the safety of The Circle and ultimately allows her participation in the outside world to nearly cease.  

On her way up the ladder, Mae has a couple of romantic encounters – one with an employee, Francis, who's damaged childhood has him working on the development of a new computer chip to be used in keeping all children safe.  The other, Kalden, is a man that knows too much about the inner-workings on campus with who she has a brief encounter and then finds that he can't be located on the company's website.  Does he belong here or is he an outsider trying to bring harm to The Circle and all it stands for?  Confiding her concerns to Annie, they both become determined to find out.

The deeper Mae is moves into The Circle’s core, the more she stands behind the company's demands for transparency in all things.  That anonymity should be banished.  That everyone’s past should be revealed and left open for all to see.  That millions of tiny cameras should be placed anywhere in the world, leaving anyone to be broadcast on live video and audio feeds at any given time.  That nothing recorded would ever be erased.  As the The Circles growing list of accomplishments continues to strive toward a totalitarian nightmare, there is way to stop it - or is there?   

Needless to say, this novel went against the moral and privacy rights of each of us as human begins.  I did not share Mae’s outlook nor did I agree with a lot of her choices.  However, this was a fast-paced novel, one I could not put down.  I had to know, as Mae did, the outcome.  Certain thoughts would race through my head but were quickly consumed as the story continued to build to climax.  I won’t tell you how the story ends as I don’t want to spoil the fun.  If you read the book, you already know.

If you did read it, let me know your thoughts.  Was the premise of this book as frightening to you as it was to me?  Did you consider how much of the technology in this book is already in some form or another in play in the world today?  How did you feel about Mae's character?  Did you agree with her choices?  Would you read another novel by Dave Eggers?