I only read this book because I heard that the movie was pretty good, so my expectations were not high. In general, I find that books that are turned into good movies are terrible books. There are some where the movie and the book are great, but that is typically because the people making the movie morph the book in such a way that the narrative skeleton remains, but little else; the movie and the book are distinct works of art.
Dave Eggers is considered a solid writer and a deep thinker, so there was a chance the book would be a good commentary on our modern social media, tech ruled world.
I did not find that to be the case.
The main character’s transformation throughout the book didn’t work for me. She does come into the story as your typical techo-utopian idealist, but she has enough sense of individuality that her turn doesn’t feel right. There is nothing in the plot that warrants her change and I just did not buy that the nice Wise Man had enough charisma to convince a smart, mostly undamaged person to give up everything for what is so transparently terrible.
The plot, in the beginning, is stiflingly slow as it builds up the main character. That makes the laziness of the back half so much more frustrating.
There is some social commentary about the possible ills of straying down our current path too far. However, it is hard to tell where Eggers stands on the issue. There are certainly people who play for the side of not blindly going down the rabbit hole and have well thought out ideas about why it is a patently bad idea. Yet, in the end the techno-utopian and the rampant capitalist win the day.
Perhaps the message is that society is just a bunch of sheeple blindly following a wolf dressed up in robes…
The Circle from which the book takes its title, is also just too over the top for my tastes. It’s is like someone took Google, Facebook, and Apple and mashed them into one company and then put Darth Vader and Mr. Rodgers in change.
At least I crossed it off the list….
