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A review by hanbran
The Circle by Dave Eggers
2.0
This book is, overall, better than I thought it was going to be after the first 30 pages or so, so I'm glad I pushed it out.
Like most of Dave Eggers' work, it is well written with touches of humor, and it kept me reading. It's an interesting thought experiment, seeing the dystopian tropes we're all familiar with made very possible with technology we're all familiar with. For that, the book gets two stars.
Unfortunately, as many reviewers pointed out below, the main character is SUPREMELY unlikeable -- not in that great "love to hate" kind of way or in the thoughtful "mirror of ourselves" kind of way, but rather in the insipid, childishly selfish, and infuriatingly dumb kind of way. Even all that might be overlooked if she weren't so damn boring. When Mercer tells her she's changed and that she's become boring ever since working for the Circle, I snorted out loud in disbelief -- no way was this girl EVER interesting.
Dystopian protagonists work either because they fight against the regime or because they slowly come to drink the Kool-Aid of the regime. Mae does neither -- she's invested, hook, line, and sinker, from day one. It's even more upsetting when you realize that she's supposed to be us. Unfortunately, it doesn't read so much as a profound indictment of society as a crotchety old person shaking his fist at the young folk. He may be right, but it's difficult to take seriously when it feels like a rambling scolding.
Moreover, we get no relief from this vapid character, as nearly every other character in the book is more or less the same. Annie, Francis, the other Circlers... ugh, my skin crawled every time one of them spoke. Mae's parents are at least different from the others, but they were too underdeveloped to add much to the story, and Mercer was too heavy-handed and one-dimensional to carry his weight as a character.
The worst part is that the very important message about privacy versus security is significantly diluted because, as Eggers famously bragged, he did NO research before writing. That's all well and good for a thought experiment, but unfortunately, when your dystopian novel is supposed to a logical extension of actual current trends, and when you want your book to actually mean something to your audience, and when your audience knows more about a topic than you do, you have to do a little research about the topic. I don't mean he should have toured Google's facilities -- I mean there's no way a future version of ourselves (Mae) needs so much technology explained to her (and, by proxy, to us). Those heavy-handed moments of exposition kept taking me out of the book.
Have a little faith in your readers, Eggers -- we can understand basic tech, and we can handle an actual nuanced discussion of an important issue instead of a ham-fisted doomsday prediction.
Like most of Dave Eggers' work, it is well written with touches of humor, and it kept me reading. It's an interesting thought experiment, seeing the dystopian tropes we're all familiar with made very possible with technology we're all familiar with. For that, the book gets two stars.
Unfortunately, as many reviewers pointed out below, the main character is SUPREMELY unlikeable -- not in that great "love to hate" kind of way or in the thoughtful "mirror of ourselves" kind of way, but rather in the insipid, childishly selfish, and infuriatingly dumb kind of way. Even all that might be overlooked if she weren't so damn boring. When Mercer tells her she's changed and that she's become boring ever since working for the Circle, I snorted out loud in disbelief -- no way was this girl EVER interesting.
Dystopian protagonists work either because they fight against the regime or because they slowly come to drink the Kool-Aid of the regime. Mae does neither -- she's invested, hook, line, and sinker, from day one. It's even more upsetting when you realize that she's supposed to be us. Unfortunately, it doesn't read so much as a profound indictment of society as a crotchety old person shaking his fist at the young folk. He may be right, but it's difficult to take seriously when it feels like a rambling scolding.
Moreover, we get no relief from this vapid character, as nearly every other character in the book is more or less the same. Annie, Francis, the other Circlers... ugh, my skin crawled every time one of them spoke. Mae's parents are at least different from the others, but they were too underdeveloped to add much to the story, and Mercer was too heavy-handed and one-dimensional to carry his weight as a character.
The worst part is that the very important message about privacy versus security is significantly diluted because, as Eggers famously bragged, he did NO research before writing. That's all well and good for a thought experiment, but unfortunately, when your dystopian novel is supposed to a logical extension of actual current trends, and when you want your book to actually mean something to your audience, and when your audience knows more about a topic than you do, you have to do a little research about the topic. I don't mean he should have toured Google's facilities -- I mean there's no way a future version of ourselves (Mae) needs so much technology explained to her (and, by proxy, to us). Those heavy-handed moments of exposition kept taking me out of the book.
Have a little faith in your readers, Eggers -- we can understand basic tech, and we can handle an actual nuanced discussion of an important issue instead of a ham-fisted doomsday prediction.