It’s 2014, and Google is thriving as more than just a website. It is an easy answer to everything, a few clicks and letters away from obtaining a wealth information. It’s available on people’s phones, computers and iPads. It’s everywhere, and it’s still growing.
I enjoyed most of the read, as it is enticingly time-relevant and suspenseful, “The Circle” did not live up to my expectations of its author Dave Eggers.
It pavedway to the interesting, futuristic world of the technology-savvy company called The Circle, which is the most distinguished, sought-out job in the world. It masters solutions to everything, and when the main character Mae gets a job there through her friend, she finds out the three geniuses behind the Circle have much bigger plans than anyone can imagine. Through love affairs, trying to save her father and becoming the world-known face of the Circle, Mae transforms herself to fit this new world.
Eggers chose a detail-driven world of technology advances instead of a book about human interactions. As the book goes along, it becomes more and more emotionally dry. Eggers successfully gave a clear message for everyone, but at the price of a dull conclusion.
A huge problem was that the main character, Mae, whose thoughts the readers are constantly subjected to, was not altogether likable. In the course of the book, she unfolds into a desperate adolescent, more of a machine than a person, spewing out a hungry ‘yes’ whenever given the chance. At the beginning, the promise of a potential fight for the inevitable ending lingered. But readers got the opposite.
Eggers carefully dehumanized her, and critics applaud him for his skillful tactics, but it leaves the audience feeling like she’s a lost cause. Towards the end, everyone knew there was no going back to save her, and it was hard not to hate her for it. Her transformation was almost too difficult to relate to in order to be emotionally changed by the book.
“The Circle” held few redeemable characters and few situations to demonstrate an actual solution to the technology problem overtaking the current generation. The book was a fiery warning and left readers with a bad taste in their mouths. It portrayed online presence as more important than an actual presence to people these days, and it spurred conversation about technology’s role in humanity. But the book could have kept these points and gone deeper into the characters.
Though Eggers has impeccable timing on the release of such a finger-shaking message, some subtlety was in order, and some humanity. Some trust in the readers was necessary so that they could take away the message without any spoon-feeding.
“The Circle” still manages to enthrall readers through to the end. He crafts a highly detailed world all readers can easily get sucked into and enjoy. It’s still worth reading and has intriguing soon-to–be-true inventions, obsessions and often hilarious insights about the current mindset of humanity. The lack of complexity creates more than a chuckle while reading, but Eggers could have gone deeper.
The promise of an understandable sequel rather than a predictable outcome would have been appreciated, but readers can decide that for themselves.
