This frightening and eerie Dave Eggers’ novel, The Circle, involves a vast and powerful
corporation. The novel has echoes of
Jonathan Swift, Margaret Atwood, and George Orwell, with a shadow of Dante’s Inferno.
mirror to our current world,
makes me shiver.
Mae Holland has graduated from college, and her first job
turns out to be deadly boring. Her
college roommate offers Mae an opportunity to work for an exciting and
progressive company, known as “The Circle.”
Her first day on the job seems like a dream come true. As days pass, she finds herself overloaded
with connections she is required to maintain for thousands of people also
connected to The Circle.
At first, she breezes through her first contacts with
customers, but then the work begins to grow more than she can handle. One day, Gina stops by her office. Eggers writes, “‘this would be a good time to
set up all your socials. You got
time?’ ‘Sure,’ Mae said, though she had
no time at all. // ‘I take it last week was too busy for you to set up your company
social account? And I don’t think you
imported your old profile?’ Mae cursed
herself. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been pretty overwhelmed so far.’ / Gina
frowned. […] Gina tilted her head and
cleared her throat theatrically.
[…] ‘We actually see your
profile, and the activities on it, as integral to your participation here’”
(95). Mae is then shown a dizzying array
of computer screens which create numerous obligations for interacting with
thousands of other “Circlers”—as they are known—all around the world. Gina opens a “Zinger” account for Mae, and
she suddenly has over 10,000 co-workers she must constantly monitor and
establish interactions.
At another company meeting, one of the engineers
demonstrates a miniature camera, which can be hidden. He shows a few camera views—all ultra-high
definition and audio as well. Eggers writes,
“Now there were twelve live images of white-topped mountains, ice-blue valleys,
ridges topped with deep green conifers. // [This] ‘can give me access to any of
the cameras he wants. It’s just like
friending someone, but now with access to all their live feeds. Forget cable.
Forget five hundred channels. If
you have one thousand friends, and they have ten cameras each, you now have ten
thousand options for live footage. If
you have five thousand friends, you have fifty thousand options. And soon you’ll be able to connect to
millions of cameras around the world.
[…] ‘Imagine the implications!’’
Yes, imagine in deed!
The speaker goes on to say that the plan is for millions of
these tiny cameras covering the entire world available to everyone’” (65). If you thought Facebook destroys privacy,
think again. This is only the beginning.
One day, a mysterious man meets Mae on her way back to the
office. He introduces himself as Kaldan
and asks her to demonstrate what she does.
He has a badge admitting him to the company, so she obliges him. Eggers writes, “Mae paused. Everything and everyone else she’d
experienced at The Circle hewed to a logical model, a rhythm, but Kaldan was
the anomaly. His rhythm was different,
atonal and strange, but not unpleasant.
His face was so open, his eyes liquid, gentle, unassuming, and he spoke
so softly that any possibility of threat seemed remote. // […] And so he
watcher Mae answer requests. // […] He was close to her, far too close if he
was a normal person with everyday ideas of personal space, but it was
abundantly clear he was not this kind of person, a normal kind of person”
(94). Then he leaves. Attempting to develop some theories about
what goes on in this “corporate utopia,” heightens the suspense of this novel.
Dave Eggers suspense filled novel, The Circle, will keep you on the edge all the way to the end. 5 stars
--Chiron, 6/15/18
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