With The Circle - A Book Review

The Circle is a book based on an eponymous company that monopolizes technology, internet and security. The book starts as Mae, a simple, average woman begins her work at said company. The book follows Mae as she climbs up the ladder at the company and is more and more engrossed in its values. The Circle became powerful through its program TruYou that unified everyone's accounts to one username and password, thus removing any anonymity from the internet.

Now, this book is on the precipice of intrigue, frankly verging on the mundane. Despite the interesting premise, it doesn't rise any new arguments about totalitarianism, or omniscient media. The characters are simply bland and predictable, not least of which is Mae, whose character is so thin that it raises the question whether or not this was intentional.

Did Egger deliberately use a petty, under-developed character as a protagonist as a representation of typical online personas? One could argue that; as she is at times dishing unwanted criticism, while completely disregarding the recipients feeling, and at others obsessing over how people perceive her. At one point she is crushed when a poll revealed she is liked by only 97% of the people in The Circle. And at times I could swear she was simply trolling.

Even though the faulty character might have been a brilliant move, the plot is uninteresting, and underdeveloped. The foreshadowing is blatantly obvious and serves, frankly as a spoiler to its own plot.

I was really excited when I bought this book because it talks about something I always think about: is our individualism giving way to "pop culture"? Is our security being compromised in the name of globalization? But I was genuinely let down. With people growing weary each day about just what large corporations may do with our information, I expected more of the book.