Reviews with content warning for Chronic illness - The Circle

Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

sareidle's review against another edition

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dark informative tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No

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paguroidea's review

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dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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fionafsw's review against another edition

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dark funny informative reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I devoured this book like that Marianas Trench shark did the aquarium contents.

The Circle was a page-turner and an easy read in that sense: the writing was elegant and flawless and never gave me cause to question, stumble or stop. The dystopic and only slightly fictional world that the author (who is the founder of McSweeney's) created was well thought through and believable. All elements of this world checked out, and what I appreciated was that the author showed me things not for the sake of showing off how clever he was to have come up with them but because every detail played a role in completing my immersion into that world. The plot was fast-paced and the dialogue was crisp and natural.

The story was as if a collection of Black Mirror episodes were combined and transformed into a 500-page novel. Its starting point is our current digitalized and social media-dominated world and takes it several steps farther. What made my reading experience so riveting was that transformations continued to take place as the plot progressed: the world was dynamic and (d)evolved further with every page.

The climax was one of the best I'd ever read in any novel. Perfect build-up - and release - of tension.

Perhaps my only question is where all the political science and philosophy students were to remind everyone of the downsides to direct democracy or the logical gaps in ideas like focusing policing on those with a prior record. Though I guess the point is that the Circle dissolves critical thinking and silences voices that resist assimilation into the hive mind.

The Circle presents big topics in a very digestible way. I see it as an interesting complement to William Dalrymple's The Anarchy in its warning about what can happen when a private for-profit corporation expands unchecked.

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loiscarlisle's review against another edition

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dark

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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theloveroflovers's review against another edition

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challenging reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

The characters are so unlikable that at some point you get the urge to keep reading to see them realise their stupidity. The writting stile is good but to detailed, slow-paced. The book was too long and the end wasn't sadisfying.

If you wanr to read the book, listen to the audibook instead.

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shortstackmayor's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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ottercorg's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Usually it's hard for me to read a book with a main character that makes me so mad, but for this plot to really work, Mae had to play that role.

I love considering at which moment any given reader would finally say The Circle had gone to far. At which new implement does any given reader lose hope?

I read this book thinking about Meta, and now that I've finished I think about it in the context of Ai in this current world.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed it. As always, I like books to neatly tie off all plotlines at the end and this one doesn't do that - but apparently this is a series, which means there's still hope...

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samdalefox's review against another edition

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challenging slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

I read this because I had heard good reviews from people who don't usually read dystopican sci-fi type books, plus I saw the film advertsied on netflix and thought I'd like to read the book before trying the film. So I didn't have high expectations, but I did have expectations. I think that people like The Circle so much precisely because they've not read other dystopian scifi. If you’ve never swam in the ocean then of course a pool seems deep. The Circle is ok, but it's nothing new (totalitarian corporate capitalist technocracy has been around for decades) and it's certainly not done well. Eggers even cocks up the references and definitions by referring to it as communism....twice.

The usual themes emerge: the use, scope, and abuse of power that comes with who can own, access, and benefit/be penalised by technology. The limits of personal privacy and individualism vs the 'collective good' of transparency. The importance of consent and having the option to opt out. Very limited commentary on the role and limitations of democracy. It touched upon more modern ermeging issues such as changes to people's sense of identity, belonging, and self worth i.e., "The tools you use, artificially manufacture unaturally extreme social needs". Plus the addictiveness, feeling of urgency, and faux-connectedness of being 'very online'. In a nutshell, a society that knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

I agree with the review referenced below. I will also add that I found Mae's character unbelievably naive. Even accounting for her desperate need for praise and age. For me things went downhill rapidly after the end of book one with her announcement

of going transparent

. Most events that occurred did so slowly, repetitively, superficially, predictably and naively. The ending did not surprise me or disappoint me, it was simply one big meh. It didn't scare me at all. In short, there are other books out there that have covered these topics in greater depth, with more interesting angles, and with a better command of storytelling. I'd recommend first reading Liu Cixin's scifi short story 'The Mirror'.

dllh's review:

"This is fine, if a bit long and baggy, for like commodity fiction, but it was really disappointing as a book from an author with literary proclivities. It's an important subject whose potential is ruined in this book by a failure at some of the basics of writing well. The characters are just barely two dimensional, and their interactions often feel as if written by somebody who has never actually witnessed human interaction outside of badly written dialogue. The details of the book are sufficiently close to our current reality as to not feel outlandishly dystopian but sufficiently off kilter as to not feel quite real, which makes reading it a really strange experience. To work well, fiction of this sort needs to be either outlandish or close enough to reality that the divergences from reality are really significant, and I don't think Eggers achieves that balance."

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