The Circle by Dave Eggers

Genre: Fiction 

Publisher: Knopf

Pages: 508

Rating: ★★★


Synopsis

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 America--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. 

My Thoughts

If you, like myself, are a member if Generation Y, then you absolutely have to read this book. The Circle has been sitting in my to-read list for about a year, but I finally got around to reading it. It was absolutely eye-opening and so interesting to read. The ending of the story was a little unfulfilling to me, but in the end its not really the story that you're paying attention to...its the role technology plays in our lives and how it can turn to control us. 

This book is a dystopian satire of the way the internet and social media could be. This book was almost shocking because of the troubling ideas and themes - mostly, because we live in a world where The Circle (a kind of Google, Facebook, Apple super company) could absolutely happen. 

There were so many times when I was reading that I thought that the world could so easily turn to this place where we only live within the confines of the internet. It has been compared many times to Orwell's 1984, and I couldn't agree more. This novel's release is perfectly timed for a world that could very quickly head toward the destruction that is described. 

My Favorite Line 

You willingly tie yourself to these leashes. And you willingly become socially autistic. You no longer pick up on basic human communication clues. You're at a  table with three humans, all of whom are looking at you and trying to talk to you, and you're staring at a screen, searching for strangers in Dubai.