Wow, this was a hard review to write. So many things are contained in this book. There were times when I became so frustrated with the protagonist that I felt like hurling the book across the room, but in the end it is a novel of significance. There is more to say about it than I can properly summarise here, and if you are interested in a deeper analysis I will refer you to Margaret Atwood's fantastic review in The New York Review of Books.
This is Eggers' Orwellian tale, foretelling apocalypsis through technological subsumation. Eggers has received censure from some of the IT crowd, who dispute the accuracy of his portrayal of their world. But for me, and indeed for those members of our bookclub who work in IT, this had the ring of truth about it. Frighteningly, Eggers' warning feels timely and realistic.
Mae Holland is in her early 20s and in a dead-end career until she leans on her best friend Annie to get her a job at The Circle, which is basically what you would get if Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft joined forces: a monster tech company, a total monopoly, the offices of which constitute a massive 'campus', not dissimilar to the grounds of various tech companies that already exist (though much bigger). The Circle is run by the 'three wise men', each of whom resembles a tech figure we know in real life (Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, perhaps?), and the 'gang of forty', a group of the 40 highest ranking officers in the company.
Mae and Annie are very close, sharing a believable friendship and dialogue that frequently sparkles with comedic wit. For the first weeks after Mae joins The Circle she continues to leave campus for visits home to her family, to sleep at her own apartment, and to commune with nature through her solitary hobby of kayaking. Mae's father suffers from MS and needs increasing care, and Eggers writes a couple of scenes early on of father-daughter bonding which reveal that Mae is close to her parents. Her ex-boyfriend Mercer is also still friendly with Mae's parents and is often present when she visits home, an annoyance she has learned to live with. Mercer voices concern about Mae's new job from the beginning, raising the moral counterbalance to Mae's unquestioning enthusiasm for The Circle - a necessary warning because it's not long before Mae becomes totally absorbed in her work to the detriment of everything else in her life.
Indeed, she becomes so engulfed in the philosophy of her workplace that leaving the campus for any reason becomes actually uncomfortable - life outside is comparably so messy (both literally and figuratively). And the corollary to her voluntary submission to The Circle is her rise within it. In no time at all, it seems, Mae has moved into the upper echelons of The Circle, away from the customer service team in which she started into something that is far creepier.
In some ways it seems unrealistic that Mae, a person who initially derives genuine pleasure from solitary pursuits, from being surrounded by nature, from close relationships with family and friends, so quickly becomes absorbed into a world in which none of these things are considered to have value. One scene in particular, a seminal scene for Mae, shows her kayaking by herself in darkness to an island she knows she should not visit, and her excitement and enjoyment stem from the thrill of doing something illicit and unknown. Ironically it is this experience that lies at the centre of her eventual mutation into a Circle hero, the centrepiece of The Circle's increasingly pronounced ethos - "Secrets are Lies; Privacy is Theft".
As Mae eschews contact with Mercer, her parents and eventually Annie in favour of the all-knowing, all-seeing Circle, the tale becomes eerily familiar and worryingly prophetic.
Eggers writes with a fluid, clear style that immediately captured my attention and drew me in. He sets the scene perfectly. As a reader you can understand why Mae would be excited to work at The Circle. But as soon as I read that it was 'like Paradise' I knew it would be the very opposite. What is frustrating is that Mae never has this realization. Alarm bells started to ring for me during her first few days at work, when she was asked to transfer all of her personal information from her phone and her own laptop onto Circle devices. As Mae was informed that all of that information now existed in The Circle's cloud, accessible to anyone, I began to feel deeply uncomfortable - but she didn't blink. When Mae was told about the exciting work Francis was doing to ensure child safety, by installing chips into their BONES (!), neither she nor anyone else at The Circle paused to consider the consequences, or enunciate any concern - but as readers we are supremely aware that those children will grow to be adults whose every move can be monitored.
What is incredibly clever about Eggers' writing is that although we are able through our outsiders' lense to comprehend the problematic nature of The Circle's practices, each new privacy-killing scheme is introduced in the book by socratic conversation in which convincing, rational, utilitarian arguments are put forward in favour of The Circle's methods. It's unnerving, because we understand how multitudes of people might be persuaded by the same arguments.
For example: Don't you want your neighbourhood to be safe? Wouldn't you rather sacrifice some of your own privacy for the privilege of knowing without a doubt that your family and your home were always safe?
Or: Oh, you're concerned about your information being made public? Why? What have you got to hide?
It is the same ploy that has been used over the past ten years to persuade us to give up all kinds of civil liberties. Isn't the sacrifice of a stranger viewing your nude body worthwhile if it means safety in the skies? Isn't the safety of our civilians worth the annoyance of the government listening in on our phone calls?
If we have already given up these freedoms, what's to say we might not be amenable to giving up more, as Eggers predicts?
About three quarters of the way through the book I became frustrated. Various metaphors are drawn that are awkward and condescending. A few major events felt unrealistic to me - or rather, Mae's unquestioning response to them felt unrealistic. I also found Mae as a character to be thoroughly unlikeable. The speed with which she turns her back on her family and her friends, her narcissism and selfishness were not endearing. And I found the ending of the book less satisfying than I had hoped (but this may be because I wanted to feel some optimism, and really - an apocalyptic book such as this should not end on an optimistic note or what's the point?).
But in the grand scheme of things, all of these are minor faults.
The truth is that since putting the book down I have been more aware of the way technology is infiltrating every part of our lives. It is difficult to keep the book from crossing my mind when I 'check in' on Facebook or see advertisements heralding new social media developments. I keep wanting to talk to people about it. Eggers' style is disarmingly breezy, so that it is not until one sets the book down that one suddenly realises how profound he has been. Some critics have suggested that Eggers is undeserving of praise because none of this is new - we all realise that we are fighting a losing battle against new technology. To those critics I say: Sure. But that doesn't mean it's something we should not be urged to consider, it doesn't mean it's unnecessary to shake the greater population out of its complacency or ask ourselves what we intend to do about it. As the great Ferris Bueller famously said, life moves pretty fast. If we don't do something about this now, it may soon be too late.
Overall assessment: 4.5 out of 5. This is a book that is worth more than the story within it. I am certain it will become a classic of our age. A real conversation-starter, you will be desperate for people around you to read it so you can discuss it - perfect for bookclubs.
Notes and noteable passages:
- Eggers is occasionally very funny. I had to clamp my lips shut to stop myself from waking everyone in the household with laughter when I first read the passage between Mae and Francis upon their first meeting:
'"This is my first day," Mae noted.
"No way."
And then Mae, who intended to say, "I shit you not," instead decided to innovate, but something got garbled during her verbal innovation, and she uttered the words "I fuck you not," knowing almost instantly that she would remember these words, and hate herself for them, for decades to come.'
- I like Annie, who expresses herself in surprisingly original ways - to Mae, for example: '"You're like part human, part rainbow."'
- This is a very accessible book, which I think is a good thing for a text which Eggers obviously wants as many people as possible to read. Nevertheless, his skill as a writer is clear. Some of his descriptions are delightfully original.
- I coudn't decide whether it was because Eggers was a man that he believed Mae would accept such unsatisfactory sex on a regular basis or whether it was just another indicator of the level to which she had descended - that it was preferable to her to be with a man she actually finds detestable and have company, than to be free of him but alone. Sadly I think many women make this kind of sacrifice even without the daily pressure of complete transparency.
- Mercer's outcries occasionally felt forced, but what he says is so crucial and so relevant even for today's society:
"Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication... No one needs the level of contact you're purveying. It improves nothing. It's not nourishing. It's like snack food."
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