Book Review: The Circle by Dave Eggers

Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?

I wanted to see The Circle because Emma Watson is in the movie. But because I was afraid the movie would influence my opinion about the novel, so I wanted to read it first and it disappointed me a lot!

Book Review: The Circle by Dave Eggers

Rating:


Title & Author: The Circle by Dave Eggers
Genre: Science-Fiction, Mystery
Release Date: October 8 2013
Series: standalone
Publisher: Knopf

Synopsis

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. 

As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. 

Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in America – even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

I give The Circle two out of five hearts because it felt like it was just a story about someone starting to work at a company and only about two thirds in there was some actual development. Which is usually something I do not like about stories. I want to be sucked in and that I can’t let it go anymore. I started reading this novel weeks earlier and only got to finishing it after downloading the audiobook and listened to it at 2x the speed.

Mae felt like a real girl, with real flaws and everything. I loved that, which goes for most of the characters. But that is one of the only reasons why I think this is more than a one star read. I actually liked Mae, but the changes Bailey makes to her life are just completely idiotic! Why would anyone want to run around with a camera around their neck so they always feel watched and behave like that to, why not imagine it? But she also feels very real because she tries to make herself seem to have more virtue than other people after she goes transparent to the world and the company makes her lose her own identity be having to share all her experiences on the social media of TruYou and The Circle.

The Wise Men, the leaders of The Circle, are most of the time not even in the story and I still do not get why Ty was pulling himself out of the media and seducing Mae in his spare time as someone else. I really do not understand most of this novel.

I thought the end was the most weird one ever. I actually went back to my novel to check on whether the novel really ended like the audiobook ends. Because the end is basically bla bla bla. THE END. All of a sudden! And I felt like WTF. Mae ranted out Ty to Bailey and that was it! I do not understand.

The Movie

In June 2017 The Circle was released into cinemas. I really wanted to wait to finish the novel before seeing the movie. It took me forever to get to the end of the novel and the I went to see the movie. And I hated it! I usually finish anything I start, but I stopped half way into the movie. I really did not like it and all the things I did not like from the novel was in there and they changed the only things I did kind of like.

It made me really sad that Emma Watson wasted her time on this movie. It did not feel like something she would work in.

Let me know what you thought of this book and/or movie!
If you have any requests for which book I should talk about next, please let me know in the comments down below.

For now, let books enrich your life!

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