Book Review: The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Circle

by Dave Eggers

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.

This is a dystopian novel that discusses social media in an interesting way. The main character, Mae Holland, enters the Circle, her dream company and works in Customer Experience. Surrounded by high-tech gadgets, Mae is giddy with pride and puppy-eagerness. The Circle has all these programs that include worldwide, high-res cameras and implanted trackers. Not only does the Circle pay a sumptuous salary, but it also covers Mae’s mother and sick father’s health insurance. All the company demands is participation, total participation. Mae uses the social media as a normal person would: post when you feel like it. But no, the Circle believes she’s unwilling to share her life with others and see it as a sign of low self-esteem. After several times to the boss’s office, Mae begins to fervently maintain and groom her social media presence: sending multiple “zings,” pictures, posts, smiles, and frowns (terms similar to like and dislike?). Her social rank climbs up as her involvement in her family decreases. Soon, the company pushes for “transparency,” which is exposing your life entirely to cameras and open to viewers anywhere. Chastened by a near-arrest involving cameras, Mae volunteers for this transparent life. She is instantly a celebrity with millions of viewers, but her life is ironically vanishing.

I can’t say I like Mae Holland as a protagonist; she has this really naive personality and readily changes to people’s demands. Worse, she doesn’t even know when she’s being brainwashed. As the novel progresses, we see her transform from a normal person who occasionally goes on social media and “socializes” to full-on online celebrity who is constantly under public scrutiny and has no real life. She used to have an interesting habit of going kayaking in the bay near her house, something she kept to herself and was reprimanded when her co-workers discovered she did not share this experience with others. The bay and the seals represent the last peaceful area in Mae’s life that isn’t robbed when she joined the Circle, but after she went “transparent” she never visited the bay again. Her family life also suffers from overexposure. What begins as closed circuit surveillance for monitoring her parent’s health becomes an unbearable burden on the old couple that eventually drives them out of their own house. Mae even stupidly pushes a friend to suicide simply because he refuses to participate in social media. She wants to know everything about everyone, the true epitome of social media. I remember a few pithy sayings from our protagonist, including “secrets are lies,” “sharing is caring,” and “privacy is theft.” It’s almost like the propaganda in 1984. Another point of stupidity is her dating life. She begins to see a mysterious man named Kalden who is beyond cryptic, to the point Mae never knew his last name. I simply don’t believe this can happen. How can you have a relationship with someone you don’t even know? Speaking of this Kalden...

Kalden is actually the founder of the Circle who created the multi-social-media platform. He never anticipated the enormity of his action, and he soon regrets his decisions after he sees the consequences. By approaching Mae, Kalden tries to stop this global madness that proceeds to require everyone to have an account in order to vote. If the Circle sees everything, it can control everything. They can dictate what information its users see, and it has already silenced several statesmen who objected to its monopoly. Kalden is obviously a mad genius but he is also clueless when it comes to who to trust. Why trust Mae, of all people, with his plans of disseminating the Circle? She’s an online celebrity who thrives on attention that would be taken away if the Circle is gone. It’s like asking the Kardashians to end reality TV shows. Nuh-huh, not going to happen. I think Kalden lets his own relationship blind his judgment, which is a pity and also extremely frustrating because it leaves the readers with a really unpalatable ending.

As a whole, I think many people will enjoy The Circle because of its interesting take on the influence of social media and its poignant execution of the idea. Eggers did not create very realistic characters, and the main characters can irritate readers quite a bit. Moreover, it shows how everyone would grab at other people’s attention as if that’s the only thing measuring their value (for many it is). The setting, on the other hand, convincingly and accurately captures contrast between the flurry of activity in a robust, frenetic company and the homey feeling of Mae’s parent’s house and the peaceful bay near it. Frankly, since social media conglomeration and mandatory tracking chips won’t happen in real life any time soon, I’m happy to recommend The Circle as a slightly long-winded but contemplative read.