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The Circle - Dave Eggers - 1 generous star and two dozen frowns
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Actually, in a dystopian novel you don't have to have a rebel, although usually there is one.This does NOT sound like something I'd want to read now. I like developed characters and don't need random sex scenes. That said, perhaps I'll see the movie.
Thanks for sticking this out and saving many of us the grueling grind of trying it out ourselves!
I guess not, but since it's defined as being a bad state, I'm guessing it's not normal for a dystopian novel to be shown as very good from start to finish?
Wow. Killer review. Oddly, on some level, it kinda made me want to read it just because you raised so many great questions about what the author might have been trying to do. It almost sounds like a good book club book except for the fact that everyone could hate it.With so much to read, I doubt I'll go here, but your review was very intriguing and thought provoking. The lack of character development sounds like a nail in the coffin to me though.
I know what you mean, my colleague spent the week hearing me complain about it every day, so she asked to borrow it when I was done!
I agree Mae was pretty awful (view spoiler)- but I guess her unsympathetic character didn't bother me very much. I gave this three stars because I really liked the premise, and the book itself was highly entertaining. Unlikable characters don't bother me that much. I feel like the reader was supposed to view Mae more as a representation of conformity over anything else. I liked the "spiral" down from reliable to an unreliable narrator. I do admit, reading harsh negative reviews are totally more fun than good reviews, lol. Even though our thoughts on the book differ, it's a fabulous review. Also, I'm definitely going to see the movie once it comes out on redbox also. See what Emma Watson does with Mae.
Love this review. I didn't hate the book as much as you did but I did rate it 2.5 stars. Unfortunately, I didn't write a review and my memory for books isn't that great :-D.I thought that part of the point of the book was to dislike Mae and how society has become more about the "fake" likes etc than about real substance. Most dystopian stories are in a world where there is clearly some sort of devastation (natural or man-made) but I thought some of the point was that if you just ratchet up the FB/Google/Amazons of the world a bit, but it is recognizable as this world, how would it change society.
I started reading this at the same time as I started reading The Secret History and they had such similar underlying themes of mind control and evil. Both had a "gullible innocent" as the main character and neither seemed likable. I stopped reading them at the same time. I think either might be palatable given I was in the right frame of mind and I wasn't reading them together.
I also love the awarding of frowns! lol
Great review. Definitely NOT going to read this one.
Thanks for the comments, haha! It's always easier to find things to say when you dislike a book than when you like it. For me at least, I tend to be more voluble when I criticize than when I compliment.
Hmmmm, some of your comments make me want to read this (The Hunger Games from the POV of someone in the Capitol who sees nothing wrong with the way things are), but others make me not (the fact that Mae is so unlikable). It's also a positive that it's not boring. That's the main reason I end up not liking a book. Another one, though, is unlikable characters! But, I don't always hate books with unlikable characters. That varies.
Hmmmmmm
Ellie, I haven't read the book, but I felt the same way when I watched the movie. It made me so uncomfortable and angry. I hope the second book/movie will make up for it, but I doubt I'll read/watch it to see.
Oh well that's unfortunate, I was hoping the movie would be better!
Imagine a world in which Google has taken over everything. Not only social media, communication, the Internet and technology, but also government, police, health. Free will. Well, this is The Circle. Everything goes through the Circle, and the Circle knows everything. I mean everything. Mae Holland is a young woman recently out of college who gets hired by The Circle. She soon loses touch with “real life,” life outside the walls of the Circle “campus,” life that is not dictated by her number of followers, her performance, or her popularity rank in the company.
This book made me angry. Literally mad. I think I said in a previous review here that I only gave 1-star ratings when I didn’t just dislike the book, but it actually caused me to hate it for one reason or another. Well, I would need a whole new category for this one. If it was possible to give negative stars to books on GR, I would.
Before starting the actual review, which I’ll try not to make too rant-like, I’ll start by apologizing to those of you who already read it and liked it.
Okay, so as soon as I started reading it, it made me uncomfortable. I wasn’t quite sure why though, until about a hundred pages in; the book is often categorized as a dystopia. When I think of a dystopia, of the protagonist in a dystopia, it’s often a rebel, someone who is against the new world order, from the beginning or later. In fact, the definition for a dystopia is “an imagined state where everything is unpleasant or bad.” Except here, the protagonist, Mae, was the complete opposite. She loved the Circle, it was the best thing to happen to the planet, there was absolutely no confrontation in the book. It was like if the Hunger Games had been written from the point of view of someone in the Capitol, who didn’t see a single problem with what was going on in the world.
And speaking of Mae, I don’t think I’ve ever met a more unpleasant protagonist. She was mean, selfish, narcissistic and vindictive, while also being completely naive, spineless and lacking in confidence. I mean, at some point there’s a survey in which the question is “is Mae awesome?” First, she assumes that every single one of her 10K+ colleagues will answer yes. When the results come in, she sees 368 people said no. And that is dramatic. Two pages later, she’s thinking these people want her dead. Four pages later, that they would rather she had never been born. And the entire book is like that: the only thing that matters to her is that people like her, admire her, love her. To the point where she frequently loses from view that other people might not see things the same way. I can think of three occasions where she seriously hurts others because she assumes they want the same thing as her and casually does something supposedly for them but primarily for herself, and then turns back, all smiles, expecting love and thanks.
As for the other characters, not one of them intrigued me. They were all pretty much unidimensional, with no evolution between page 1 and page 495–or “too little, too late” evolution. Every character who dared question the ways of the Circle–and by extension of what Mae was becoming through the Circle–was automatically put down, described by Mae and other characters as losers, pathetic fuckers, fat and ugly. They were never given a voice, we only saw everything through the “The Circle is perfect” lens.
But the main problem is that I never quite understood what the author was trying to achieve. Yes, Mae was a despicable person–but was she supposed to be? The Circle followers were depicted as gullible fools–but were we supposed to glean a lesson from that? There were parts that could have been used as “teachable moments”–sending frowns to governments, for example, how exactly is that supposed to help? But since every voice of reason was immediately ridiculed and quenched, it was extremely difficult to see what the author thought of what he was writing, and what he wanted the reader to think.
Now, you might wonder why I real the whole nearly-500 page thing completely, and so quickly (6 days!) The synopsis on the back cover said it was a “heart-racing novel of suspense,” so I was waiting for a trigger of some sort that would change what was going on. By the time I realized it wasn’t coming yet, I was past page 200, and figured I might as well keep going. Turns out the “heart-racing suspense” lasts a grand total of 8 pages–and is not all that suspenseful, since if you’ve read the rest of the book, you’re going to guess what happens.
But that leads me to the one good thing I do have to say about the book: it was not boring. Bad, yes, but there wasn’t a time where I wanted to put it down and start something else. I did go through it probably more quickly than I would have had I liked it–ironically–because I wanted it over with so I could move on to something better, but it was never boring to read.
Finally, and again ironically, it makes me want to see the movie even more now. Emma Watson is playing Mae, and I can’t imagine her having accepted the role if Mae in the movie is as dumb and superficial as she is in the book. I’m curious to see what changes they made (I saw one in the trailer).
And I also hope there are fewer random sex scenes. Those were just plain weird.