Genres: Fiction
The Circle by Dave Eggers is a dystopian novel. Even though it doesn’t contain any epidemic wash out that is affecting humanity on a large-scale or affected by some alien species(people from another planet), yet it is a science fiction, sub genre dystopian novel. It is closer to the reality, set in not afar future, and is about the daily musings we deal and care about: anonymity! Anonymity from the internet, which nowadays is a synonym for the term world.
The blurb is simple. The Circle is an organisation specialising in technology related to internet. It’s basically like Google. To get hired to work for Circle is once in a lifetime opportunity just for the developers and engineers in real world. The Circle is all about its California Campus, social media, banking, and their universal operating system resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. Even the employees have ranks and ratings that determines their popularity inside the Circle.
Mae Holland, our so-called protagonist is given this opportunity. She works hard, day in, day out and is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. But things starts to change. Mae is introduced by an unwanted event to the company’s one of the founders and who will change the way the privacy is handled in our lives.
The quite the liked whole idea of the story even before I started reading the book. There different elements used by Eggers to indulge his readers has chosen the internet as its basic playground and with internet comes the keywords like secrets, and privacy. In the book, one will find the basic science fiction stuff along with flavour of dystopia and suspense. The book overall relates to one question that is our own privacy on the internet. Some might like that, some might not. Some are too eager to read other people’s minds. They feel safe if the whole world is exposed rather than their own world is hovered by a shadow.
The book starts slow but the introduction to different characters and the introduction to the Circle is almost too realistic. Then after a hundred pages or so, the pace of the novel doesn’t improve thus causing distress to a reader’s mind. The lack of the pace with the kind of suspense it offers is a down point and because of this, the characters become flat at some point. The only thing that saves the novel as a book is the climax. If you are reading this novel, continue to do so. The climax is something you won’t find in majority of the ‘dystopian’ novels.
3 out of 5!
It is similar to 1984 by Orwell yet different in some aspects from your review.
Yes and there’s a climax and anti-climax if you prefer.
Of course, they already watch us through our “smart” TVs (be very afraid of anything a liberal describes as “smart”) and CCTV cameras at every intersection. How much privacy do we have left?
The only privacy we have left is our own thoughts!
I wanted to read this book. Should I give it a try?
Nice review btw!
Thanks!
Yeah go ahead and give it a try. It is worth giving a try.
I liked this one a lot, the ideas were just believable enough to make them unnerving.
Yeah! The ideas were quite realistic.
I read this book a year or so ago and I agree with your conclusions completely. Although I have to admit that I didn’t like Mae from the beginning.
Haha Mae is not a likeable character, I agree. I realised that halfway through the book.
Agree with the comments but I feel that the description of how work has, in many cases, become almost indefinable from the ‘Farmville’ click-for-gratification games is chillingly accurate. Many roles at modern businesses appear to revolve around formatting spreadsheets and customer service, as Mae is essentially doing, is simply responding to enquiries rather than solving the problems themselves.