So, confession, I didn’t really know anything about this book until I saw on a list of books that are being made into movies this year. So naturally, Hubs and I both wanted to read The Circle before its upcoming movie in April. It sounded like an interesting idea, with some interesting similarities to real life big companies. If I’m being completely honest, I probably mostly picked up this book because Emma Watson is going to play the lead in the movie. Sorry.. (not that sorry).
This was a good, intriguing, and thought-provoking book, but it seriously gave me the creeps (and a freaky dream the night I finished it as well). This is in no ways some horror/slasher book, just to be clear, but I get weirded out and paranoid about the psychological stuff that was presented by The Circle. Essentially, The Circle is a huge company that runs/tracks a lot of major areas of its users lives. Think if Google, Apple, and every social media platform melded together. They would conquer the world right? That’s basically what is happening here. The Circle is bent on connecting everyone, every second of every day. Full transparency. Your location, your purchases, what you had for lunch, who you were with, what you like, when you went to sleep, all tracked by The Circle. Creepy, no?
WARNING: My ramblings from here on could technically be construed as spoilers. And I use a bad word.
Like I said book gave me the willies, and I just kept hoping for that moment when more people thought, “hmm maybe trying to know everything about everyone and having absolute transparency is fucking ridiculous and unsafe.” That moment never really came.
All in all, I wish more had happened. Frankly, I kept waiting for more people to resist The Circle and their moves to basically take over everything and become a totalitarian empire, but we hardly get to see any of that. We see our main character, Mae, vaguely start to question what she’s doing, and then become a blind follower once again. I was also disappointed that Eggers never went very far with the “tear” within Mae that would come up in times when she seemed to be on the verge of going off the deep end… I really thought that was actually going to go somewhere and lead to an actual plot twist.
All in all, thought (and paranoia) provoking read. It was all very intrigued, but I wish there had been more to the story. I assume that Eggers’ message was that we need to be careful about being fully transparent, giving up our privacy without suspicion of the powers that be, etc. But I guess I was just waiting for an uprising or rebellion of sorts and it was no where to be found.
All That & a Bag of Books 