I recently finished The Circle by Dave Eggers in advance of seeing the newly released movie based on the novel. The Circle isn't a book that I would typically pick up off the shelf, but angsty trailers with dream boat Tom Hanks and Emma Watson had me needing to know more about this story.
Eggers sets a beautifully utopian scene of a company founded on the principles of openness, transparency, efficiency, and life on the cutting edge of doing things better. As the book illustrates, why run your errands with 85 different cars? Streamline all online activity through one portal, The Circle, and do things better. Live better. Feel better. Communicate better. Be better.
Or so we think.
Young and full of energy, our leading lady and protagonist, Mae, is employed by The Circle and quickly sets her self apart as the wunderkind of her organization. However, her ascension to the upper echelon is a precarious toothpick tower waiting to collapse and bury our bright-eyed girl. Slowly Eggers begins to chip away at his beautifully manicured paradise and we see the cracks in the seemingly perfect glass. Amidst talk of openness we find secrecy. Discussions of freedom and inclusion begin to sound more like social conscription.
"But we're making people, society better."
Throughout the story as the lines between privacy and safety and the good of the people versus the good of the individual were made murky, I found myself screaming at Mae.
"Can you not see the forest through the trees, Mae?!"
Our precocious millennial maven is so enamored by the supposed goodness of the new community in which she finds herself immersed that she barely pauses to blink at the suggestion of new and potentially dangerous Circle initiatives.
I can't say that I wasn't curious about what a world like the one she dreamed of would look like.
Perhaps that was the point now, don't you think? No doubt Eggers wanted to blur these lines, to start a dialogue about the increasing presence of technology and connectivity and its societal implications.
I really enjoyed the story Eggers told. The ending left me frustrated, but it was admittedly the perfect capstone. Mae won me over with her tenacity and despite her blunders, I couldn't help but empathize. She was real and flawed and human.
All in all, if you're considering picking up The Circle, do! It was definitely worth the read.
(The movie, on the other hand, was an unfortunate disappointment...)