I’m feeling really lucky right now. According to my Goodreads account, the average number of books per year that I’ve rated 5-stars over my past six years on Goodreads has been 1.5. This year, I’ve read 11 books that I’ve given a 5-star rating. ELEVEN! Maybe I’ve lowered my standards, or my perspective has broadened. Or maybe it’s just been a really good year. Sure, four of those eleven books were re-reads, but regardless, I’m very grateful to have come across so many fantastic books in 2016.
The Circle, by Dave Eggers, happens to be one such book. One of my local independent bookstores is, naturally, a bibliophile’s paradise, with carefully curated shelves, new release tables covered in intriguing hardcovers, and a cute little cubby for beautiful classics. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mass-market paperback anywhere near this place. Anyway, I started seeing this book in paperback there about a couple of years ago, and whenever I saw it, I would stop to admire its beautiful cover, and read the synopsis on the back cover, knowing that I would get to it one day.
If you haven’t heard of it before, The Circle is a sci-fi novel about a world that, worryingly, does not seem too far off from our own. The Circle is the world’s most powerful internet company, run out of California, and they have all but completely monopolized all business the world over, linking up everything its users could possibly want including their personal email, social media, and banking. Like I said, not so far fetched.
The story follows Mae Holland, a new hire at The Circle, who can’t believe her luck in being hired by such an influential company. Over the course of the book, we see Mae’s role in the company grow more and more public. The Circle is a fairly believable exploration of an extreme direction that Western society, at least, seems to be going in. We subject ourselves to diminishing privacy by willingly sharing every little detail about ourselves on our social media.
Although The Circle was an excellent, and rather haunting, book. I can’t say that it was always enjoyable. I often found it exceedingly difficult to put down but, at times, Mae’s lack of privacy was written so viscerally and in such detail that it made me unpleasantly aware of my own social media habits.There are pages and pages following single conversations, Mae’s doctor’s appointments, and other private moments. It’s almost like we, the readers, are right there watching Mae’s every move; Mae would see no issue with that.
I highly recommend checking this book out if you’re a user of social media, or have been a fan of other tales of utopia gone awry, a la A Brave New World or 1984. I don’t think, having read this book, that I’ll change too many of my social media behaviours, but The Circle certainly made me question my relationship to privacy in a meaningful way.
Rating: 8.5/10
Be First to Comment