The Circle Book Review: The Most Terrifying Tech Novel Because Nothing in It Is Impossible

Rating: ★★★★

"The Circle" Book Review:

Dave Eggers wrote a novel about a tech company that wants to make everything transparent, track everything, share everything, and eliminate all privacy — and the most disturbing thing about The Circle is that it was published in 2013 and reads like a documentary now.

Mae Holland gets hired at The Circle, a company that combines Google, Facebook, Apple, and your worst nightmares into a single campus. The company is beautiful. The perks are extraordinary. The culture is aggressive about participation, sharing, and community engagement. The slogans — "Secrets are Lies," "Sharing is Caring," "Privacy is Theft" — sound insane written down, and the novel's trick is showing you how Mae comes to accept each one through a process that feels, step by step, entirely reasonable.

Eggers structures the novel as a seduction. Mae doesn't join a cult. She joins a company. She gets positive feedback for sharing more. She gets negative feedback for being private. The systems nudge her toward total transparency with the same gentle insistence that real social media platforms use, and by the time Mae is wearing a camera at all times and broadcasting her life to millions, she believes she's being brave. She believes she's being honest. She believes privacy is selfish.

The ending is the most chilling part. Eggers doesn't give you a rebellion. Mae's ex-boyfriend Mercer, who warns her about what she's becoming, is tracked by Circle drones and dies. Her friend Annie has a nervous breakdown. And Mae chooses the Circle. She embraces it fully. The villain isn't the company. The villain is the seductive logic of convenience and connection, and the novel ends with that logic winning.

Dion Graham narrates with a warmth that makes Mae's seduction feel even more plausible.

Four stars. Read it and then check your screen time.

If You Liked The Circle, Try:

• 1984 by George Orwell — The surveillance dystopia that Eggers is updating for the internet age. Same warning, different technology.

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley — Control through pleasure rather than force. Eggers is Huxley's heir, not Orwell's.

• Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener — A memoir about working in Silicon Valley that reads like nonfiction Circle. Same creeping unease.

From Luke Stoffel's Bookshelf

If you enjoyed this book review, check out The Warboy Chronicles — a queer series about what happens when you perform your life for an audience until the performance becomes the person, sharing The Circle's understanding that transparency can be its own kind of prison. thewarboychronicles.com (https://thewarboychronicles.com) Learn More: The Warboy Chronicles

The Warboy Chronicles by Luke Stoffel