ABOUT THE BOOK:
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.
READ AN EXCERPT:
MY REVIEW:
The Circle by Dave EggersMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Circle by Dave Eggers is a 2013 Knopf publication.
This book was recommended to me by someone recently, but I wasn’t sure if it was really my kind of book. Many folks had marked it as ‘Dystopian’ and I’m not as big on that trend as everyone else, so I waffled a little, but ultimately chose to borrow it from the library.
Reading the editorial reviews, one described this book as a parable. I can’t think of a more apt word than that for this novel.
Even in just three short years, since this book was published, many of the very things the novel cautions us about are coming to fruition. Frankly, this book was rather startling and scarier than anything I could have chosen in the paranormal or horror genre.
This is an interesting expose that naturally conjures up images of various ‘tech campuses’, and our loss of privacy in the social media age.
There are interesting parallels and a lot to mull over in this cautionary tale, and overall, the story is well written, suspenseful, and doesn’t seem all that far -fetched, in fact much of it is plausible, which is what I found so disturbing about it.
While this sort of book is not usually my cup of tea, and you won’t see me searching out similar material anytime soon, I have to confess I liked the book better than I thought I would, and can understand why is was recommended to me. It is definitely thought provoking, chilling, and had me turning and tossing for a couple of nights wondering if we are heading in exactly this direction….
GET YOUR COPY HERE:
https://www.amazon.com/Circle-Dave-Eggers-ebook/dp/B00EGMQIJ0/
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-circle-dave-eggers/1116350937
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dave Eggers is the author of ten books, including most recently Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?, The Circle and A Hologram for the King, which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company based in San Francisco that produces books, a quarterly journal of new writing (McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern), and a monthly magazine, The Believer. McSweeney’s also publishes Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. Eggers is the co-founder of 826 National, a network of eight tutoring centers around the country and ScholarMatch, a nonprofit organization that connects students with resources, schools and donors to make college possible.
