Name: Lily Elizabeth Labella's review of The Circle by Dave Eggers
Item: The Circle
Rating: 5
Author: Lily Elizabeth Labella

Dave Eggers

Fast, thrilling, compulsively addictive - The Circleis Dave Eggers's timely novel about our obsession with the internet, now available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. When Mae 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. Run out of a sprawling California campus, the Circle links users' personal emails, social media, and finances with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of transparency. Mae can't believe her great fortune to work for them - 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 ... 'Tremendous. Inventive, big hearted and very funny. Prepare to be addicted' Daily Mail 'Prescient, important and enjoyable . . . a deft modern synthesis of Swiftian wit with Orwellian prognostication' Guardian 'A gripping and highly unsettling read' Sunday Times

The Circle

Now a Major Motion Picture starring Emma Watson and Tom Hanks. A bestselling dystopian novel that tackles surveillance, privacy and the frightening intrusions of technology in our lives. 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.

amari

That our souls need the mysteries of night and the clarity of day? You people are creating a world of ever-present daylight, and I think it will burn us all alive. There will be no time to reflect, to sleep, to cool.

Zak Erving

So much better than the film version! Very good insight into the totalitarianism possibilities of modern technology, the main character's assimilation to The Circle as a young and desperate new hire is so much better developed in words than on screen. I wasn't fond of some of the dialogue, particularly from the character Mercer, as I found his messages of rebellion too perfect and profound for a regular citizen with a lot of legitimate anger and spite attempting to reject a system of oppression all by himself. It came across as purely plot device, however this did not distract me from the story too much. Kalden's secret identity was also rather irritating. It was not at all predictable and therefore did not make much sense, but this can also be chalked up to Mae's close third POV. We understand about as much as she does. I was also underwhelmed by how the 'tear' was described, seemed related to mental health as a result of far too much technology/ constant interaction.

Lily Elizabeth Labella

Lindy

I didn't finish reading this out of courtesy to my girlfriend, who begged me to stop reading as she grew tired of listening to me complain about this book's awfulness.

Sercan Y.

Bu kitap 1984 ile karşılaştırılıyor ancak onun kadar derin ve etkileyici bulmadım. Tozpembe bir distopya olmuş, anlatımdaki tekdüzelik kitabın etkisini azaltıyor. Modern distopyaların eskiler kadar derinlikli olmadığı göz önünde bulundurulursa ilgiyle okunabilir..

Jule

Omg. I devoured this Book within a week. It's a great piece that demonstrates the impact industry 4.0 can have on life if society uses social media platforms in a reckless and oblivious manner. Using simple instances for demonstration, Eggers projects how digitalism enters lives easily with no escape in a broader view.

This should seriously be read in school to teach proper usage of digital devices and social media

Jenna

I was very torn between giving this book 2 stars or 4 stars because boy, it's horrible, but boy is it FUN and entertaining to read. If you're looking for a disturbing story that focused on how tech companies will devour your soul with a disappointing plot, then this is the book for you.

Patricia Nelson

Wanted to read this before the movie came out, and I got to the final 100 pages before I saw the movie this weekend. The movie followed the book closely in many respects, but differed in many also. I enjoyed this book, although the lack of chapters bothered me a bit for the first part of the book. After a while I didn't notice anymore. The subject of the book is very thought-provoking, and would make for a great book club discussion. Although the book is almost 500 pages, it is a quick read and didn't really feel like a huge book. 
The author did a great job of helping the reader understand what the main character was feeling, and that added a lot to the storyline. Would definitely recommend!

Lisa Lindquist 

Think 1984 but add social media and subtract much of what makes 1984 so good. Fairly predictable and lackluster dystopian novel. A swing and a miss, or at least a foul ball. Wouldn't recommend taking the time to read this. 

Brandon

shelby mosel

If you liked 1984 this is a book for you. I think it will be a future classic. I was dissatisfied with a few parts of the book but not enough to stop me from giving it 5 stars

Colleen

2 Stars

This review contains spoilers.

The Circle was February's Bookclub selection. I can't say I was eager to read it, but I wasn't dreading it either. My opinion quickly changed as soon as I started reading it.

Insecure, apathetic Mae Holland lands a job at the giant internet tech company called The Circle. The Circle has gotten around those pesky anti-trust laws and managed to gobble up 90% of all internet commerce, doggedly striving to "improve" everyone's lives by incorporating every aspect of a person's online presence (from social media to online purchases to banking to voting) into one easy to use place. The Circle enfolds all of its employees in a workspace that is a Utopian cocoon so nice that they will never want to leave. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with that?

Ok, so maybe that blurb sounds interesting if a tad generic. Wait until you start reading it though...

It is quickly apparent that The Circle is not original. It borrows heavily from 1984 and Brave New World. There is not any concept that has not been pondered in many other distopian novels. Certainly, the story is brought up to date with talk of current technology, social media, etc. But it just did not offer enough to keep me interested.

This is not SciFi or really even futuristic. The technology pretty much all already exists. The only difference is that in the story everything is owned by one company. Sure, it's scary that a few flimsy anti-trust laws are all that are keeping this from being true. The sad thing is that both in this book and in real life, it is not just evil corporations responsible for loss of privacy; no, we do that ourselves. Most people are oblivious to how much privacy they willfully give away. People sign away privacy rights all the time without bothering to read the terms. They fanatically thrust the details of their personal lives onto social media in desperate attempts for attention. They replace meaningful human interaction with faceless "friends" and followers. They spend so much time and effort trying to appear perfect and seem like they are having fun that they miss out on the real experiences. Ok, ok, it should be evident by now that I have an ever increasing dislike of the way most people abuse social media by turning it into a suffocating abyss of self-absorbed, meaningless twaddleybabble. The only site I can ever stand anymore is Goodreads, and even then I have to avoid certain areas. 

Anyway, you might think that a book with a heavy handed anti-online message might fit my fancy. It certainly made for a interesting discussion at Bookclub. Which by the way is the only reason I bumped this up from 1 Star to 2 Stars. But despite making some interesting talking points, this book was darn tedious to read! You see, The Circle is entirely about the message rather than the story. So those pesky things known as PLOT and CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT are only nominally represented in a minimal effort to keep this book from being solely a long-winded soapbox. And at just shy of 500 pages with very little meat to the story, it just ends up being a bombastic lecture on how even the most innocuous technology can and will be exploited for power and control.

The Circle was a company perfect on the outside and, not surprisingly, rotten on the inside. Think of the soul(lessness) of Walmart in the body of the Google campus. The kind of thing that slithers up your arm and whispers in your ear that everything will be so easy if you just let go, let go, let go. They bombard employees with such... compelling propaganda statements as SHARING IS CARING, SECRETS ARE LIES, and PRIVACY IS THEFT. 

Mae was utterly boring as a main character. She is spineless and so desperate for attention and needing to feel like her life has meaning that she will do anything she is told. She is the ultimate compliant little Lemming ready to jump off any cliff as long as lots of people will hit Like on the video. Once she gets sucked into the tentacles of the evil conglomerate, she quickly turns into the most nauseating, inane Poster Girl ever. She is either one of the worst insipid and completely boring characters ever written or a brilliant representation of the mindless narcissistic lemmings that populate the real internet. But here is the thing: it was still mind-numbingly boring to read. There were literally solid pages describing every Like and Post Mae did on social media. Were you wondering how a book with barely any plot or character development managed to be 493 pages?? Because it is stuffed full of blow by blow minute descriptions of everything she did online. I thought it was tedious to read someone's endless narcissistic ramblings on Facebook. It turns out reading a couple hundred pages describing someone going through the process of creating those endless narcissistic ramblings is far, far worse! There are also an escalator of countless side characters who are introduced and never heard from again. Maybe they represent the empty "friend" slots that so many people desperately collect to one up each other: people you have one interaction with before adding to your treasure trove of "friends" only to never interact with them ever again.

There were also a lot of awkward sexual bits. (view spoiler)[The part with her parents was bad enough. But the whole thing with Francis? Eww. I really could have done without multiple scenes describing his premature ejaculations followed by his frantic demands for Mae to rate his performance. Mae, lacking any common sense, takes the situation as an ego boost and crows about how his um, short stamina is due to her being overwhelmingly sexy. It was uncomfortable to read. (hide spoiler)] 

The plot was jumpy and the ending was abrupt and underdeveloped. As I mentioned, the plot was more of an incidental happenstance than anything engaging. (view spoiler)[The ending was more overbearing preaching of the doomsday prediction that if we give up our privacy then eventually those power hunger people who want control will eventually cross the last line of privacy: our own thoughts. And another thing: Mae really couldn't recognize Kalden because he put on a hat? Yeah, just a hat. It does not say much for her intelligence. But then again, she clearly was not intelligent. (hide spoiler)] Even the points I agreed with made me roll my eyes because I was just so bored reading this book. If this hadn't been for Bookclub I definitely would not have finished it. The symbolism so heavy handed that it weights the story down like a lead balloon (view spoiler)[MaeDay, the Circle logo, the shark tank... it was just too much (hide spoiler)]. It was frustrating and boring. Rather than inspiring fear, it made me feel an anxious annoyance that reminded me of why I avoid social media - which as much as I value my privacy has more to do with an increasing inability to show patience towards the noxious trolls who populate the sewage bridges of the internet. I definitely would not have survived working at the Circle. (view spoiler)[The first time I got called into Human Resources for not going to lunch with a coworker I hadn't even met (!?!) I probably would have quit. And if I ever got called into HR for going TWO days without posting online??? Well, that would have made me lose my ever-loving mind - probably in a display of righteous indignation of epic proportions. (hide spoiler)]

This certainly was not "a heart-racing novel of suspense"! While I might recommend it to some people for discussion purposes, I can't say that I'm glad I read it. It was far to monotonous for that.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 2 Stars
Writing Style: 1 Star
Characters and Character Development: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 2 Stars
Level of Captivation: 2 Stars
Originality: 1 Star

Jonas

I loved the concept of this book and how very realistic it could become. You could see the problems starting to pile up from miles away, which made it even more worrisome that the characters were not realising it. I do have to say that I didn't feel that connected to the main characters, sometimes even being annoyed by her. The ending wasn't what I expected or hoped for and I was slightly disappointed by it.

filled the hole in my heart that opened when i finished severance, quite engaging and rather thought provoking, i quite like dave eggers style

cedar winslow

Caroline Oestergaard

Read this after watching the film and it blew my mind. So interesting to think about how our society is slowly moving towards a Circle system. Whether or not that’s a good thing is debatable, but what this book did really well was show both sides of a completely digital world. Very clever. 

Four stars because the ending was disappointing.

MacKenzie Hamon

I wanted to love this book. But I have to echo the sentiment of so many reviewers before me. The ideas were there in my opinion (I've definitely thought a lot about them since I finished reading it and they've made me take stock of my own relationship with the web), but the characters, dialogue, and writing were not. The characters felt very two-dimensional, and no one - not even Mae - was given enough focus to root for/against. The dialogue was stilted and conversations between characters often felt like a diatribe on rejecting the outside world for the world of the Circle. The metaphors and analogies weren't hidden at all - I felt like I was being pandered to rather than given the opportunity to reach the same conclusions the author was evidently so desperate for me to come to that he had to spell them out very blatantly throughout the work.

— lae

3.5

when i went to my english teacher and told her i read this book she immediately said, "a shitty book wasnt it?".. no..... wtf.. sorry for liking modern setting dystopian books..

save for some weird plot stuff this book was genuinely so entertaining to read god i just love modern/futuristic dystopian stuff esp when it has to do with technology??? very cool

Stefanie Viens

I didn't enjoy this book; it read like a teenage drama. I found the main character, Mae, to be entirely lifeless, naive and gullible, with no redeeming qualities. I found the parallels between The Circle and Google were made way too obvious and I found that moral tone of the story was beyond annoying.

When Mae 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. Run out of a sprawling California campus, the Circle links users' personal emails, social media, and finances with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of transparency. Mae can't believe her great fortune to work for them - 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 ...

Nick Gracilla

Poorly written, shallow characters mar an otherwise adequate contemporary 1984 dystopian vision of our near future, where privacy has been forsaken and big data promises a cradle to grave measurement and observation of every thing. Great passages include the protagonist’s experience surfing and responding to social media—numbing, chaotic, instant, out of time, meaningless. Poor passages alas abound, mostly characters lecturing.

Giulia Giacometti

I changed my review from 3 stars to 4 because it's a week later and I am still thinking about the story. 

I really disliked the main character and I kept waiting for something extra to happen but it didn't. However, that was I think kind of the point of the book..

Der Circle

Die Idee ist gut und ich denke, dass die Gesellschaftskritik durchaus gelungen ist, aber man hätte das so viel besser umsetzen können. ZB indem man diese ganzen unnötigen, unangenehmen, vom Plot unabhängigen sexuellen Beschreibungen rausstreicht, vor allem zwischen der Protagonistin und ihrer besten Freundin. Da hat man einfach gemerkt, dass das Buch von einem Mann geschrieben wurde.

Tbh konnte man das Ende auch schon erraten, wenn man sich ein bisschen mit so dystopischen Gesellschaften auskennt. Deswegen hats mich auch nicht so gepackt, wie es vielleicht vorgesehen war.

Tabea

Die Idee ist gut und ich denke, dass die Gesellschaftskritik durchaus gelungen ist, aber man hätte das so viel besser umsetzen können. ZB indem man diese ganzen unnötigen, unangenehmen, vom Plot unabhängigen sexuellen Beschreibungen rausstreicht, vor allem zwischen der Protagonistin und ihrer besten Freundin. Da hat man einfach gemerkt, dass das Buch von einem Mann geschrieben wurde.

Tbh konnte man das Ende auch schon erraten, wenn man sich ein bisschen mit so dystopischen Gesellschaften auskennt. Deswegen hats mich auch nicht so gepackt, wie es vielleicht vorgesehen war.

Alexandra Sklar

Countless people have told me to read this so I finally did. It is almost too close to reality...disconcerting but a great story.

Kwan Ann Tan

Think 1984 but a thousand times more intrusive; this book made my skin crawl and make me want to throw my phone away- or at least go on a social media cleanse for a while.

Vanessa Arenas

Meh... I feel like the idea was there and was good but the author didn't really know how to carry the story out. It is not a book I would recommend, it gets kind of boring and it was just a book I wanted to get over with and finish it. Like I said, the idea is there and it does make you think of where we are going as a society, however I think the story could have been better.

azriel

I thought it was a good book, sure. But the more I read, the more the protagonist became an anti-hero. I usually love anti-heroes, but this one was just blatantly annoying. The book is shocking, too. I don't think we're far away from completion ourselves...

Ewan

Really enjoyed it. As other reviewers have said the satire is a tad obvious sometimes. however it does address a very plausible "what if?" related to our over reliance on social and digital media. It was also a breeze to read

Zak Erving &
The Circle by Dave Eggers

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