Dave Eggers, author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," creates an insidious social media company in "The Circle."
While Dave Eggers’ new novel, “The Circle,” is a shocking, chilling rebuke to all who mindlessly embrace the wonders of the Web, it’s a cautionary tale particularly meant to scare social media mavens tweet-less.
Eggers dresses up this sinister tale of a digital behemoth, an Internet company known as The Circle, as social satire. The Circle blends the services of Facebook, Google and Twitter and creates for its users a “TruYou” profile that streamlines every online activity from posting to purchasing and more.
Users surrender their real name, and their bank card, to create a single, unique profile across all devices and in all forums. The reward is one-button access (and purchase power) everywhere. With the era of false identities over, the Web becomes truly civilized and congenial for all. No trolling. No identity theft.
Mae Holland sees only the social good when she joins The Circle, going to work at its sprawling Northern California campus. Everything an employee could possibly need or want is onsite, including dorms where the beds are refreshed daily with organic sheets.
It’s just that over time and quite insidiously, Mae's life is sucked into a social media gyre. Aside from her day job in customer service, she’s expected to post or Zing (tweet) relentlessly, and her leisure hours are meant to be spent at company events that promote unity as they entertain.
Eggers means for you to see where all this is going as he relentlessly builds the ultimate profile of The Circle as an engine of totalitarian evil. Personal freedoms are readily exchanged for the promise of safety and convenience. Society is headed for a giant fail.
In some ways, “The Circle” is the least sophisticated of Eggers’ books, which include the memoir “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.” At junctures his personal disavowal of the Internet shows in his lack of tech savvy. Still, gullible Mae is his agent in building credible fear of a near future that’s too close for comfort and gone horribly wrong.
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
“Longbourn” by Jo Baker
This retelling of “Pride and Prejudice” from the servants’ perspective is far from a gimmick. It’s serious, sufficiently literary, and satisfying. While the family is busy attending to the marriage prospects of the Bennet girls, below stairs there are similar concerns. Sarah, a housemaid, has formed an attraction to James, a new footman who has an unrevealed connection to the estate. All the familiars, who played minor roles in the novel, are fully fleshed out here, with stories that are at least involving and sometimes engrossing.
“The Lowland” by Jhumpa Lahiri
This is the second novel from the author who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for her short story collection “Interpreter of Maladies.” The story involves two brothers, Subhash and Udayan, raised in Calcutta before the partition of India. Subhash emigrates to the U.S. in the late ’60s, and it is from afar that he learns of Udayan’s dangerous involvement in a radical uprising. Udayan’s wife, a love match his family disapproves of, is left abandoned and pregnant. Subhash visits and convinces her to return with him to live as his wife. The novel spans four decades of this family’s life.
“Cartwheel” by Jennifer duBois
Inspired by the Amanda Knox case, duBois tells a convincing, compelling tale of an American, Lily Hayes, who is accused of murder while studying in Buenos Aires. The dead girl is a blond and beautiful student, Katy Kellers, from Los Angeles. Hayes, raised in a middle-class family with a sense of her own specialness and too little respect for the boundaries of others, is no killer. But a vengeful prosecutor is determined to make a case that she is. The story plays out in all its well-told complexity.
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