The Circle (Eggers novel)

Did You Know?

• In 2021 Eggers released a sequel titled The Every, in which the company has acquired an ecommerce giant and renamed itself, with Mae Holland as CEO.
• The sequel follows a new employee at The Every named Delaney Wells.
• The Circle's voting system is called Demoxie.

Plot summary

Mae Holland, a recent college graduate, lands a job at The Circle, a powerful technology company run by the 'Three Wise Men.' She owes the job largely to her best friend and college roommate, Annie, one of the forty most influential people in the company. Mae starts in Customer Experience but quickly climbs the ladder, impressed by amenities like top-notch technology, dorm-like housing, gyms, recreation activities, and parties. Her first day ends with a party where she meets Francis, a love interest. She later becomes romantically involved with a mysterious colleague named Kalden, though she cannot verify his status or obtain his last name. The Circle develops SeeChange cameras that provide real-time video with minimal effort; politicians wear them to be 'transparent.' Mae's father is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, leading Mae to enroll her parents on her healthcare and install SeeChange cameras in their home. After legal issues, Mae agrees to wear a SeeChange device herself, going 'transparent.' She gives a public talk insisting 'secrets are lies,' 'sharing is caring,' and 'privacy is theft.' Her ex-boyfriend Mercer dislikes the internet and goes off the grid. Kalden warns Mae that The Circle must be stopped, but she refuses to listen.

Themes

The Circle has subsumed Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other social media sites, giving it greater influence than major politicians. This popularity pressures politicians into going 'transparent,' being recorded at all times, which quashes political corruption. The company is implied to frame opposition politicians. It develops Demoxie, a voting system requiring every citizen to publish their vote through a Circle account, creating a vision where the Web becomes the only institution in society. The Circle devises three mantras: 'Secrets are lies, sharing is caring, privacy is theft,' communicated by Eamon Bailey. Ideas like wide-scale crime reduction through SeeChange cameras appear utopian, but the cameras infringe on civil liberties, recording private sex acts or nature visits. Once Mae goes transparent, she cannot have authentic conversations and self-polices mundane behaviors like eating junk food or telling white lies.

Reception

Before the book's 2013 US release, former Facebook employee Kate Losse accused Eggers of plagiarizing her memoir The Boy Kings and of gender bias in literary praise. Eggers stated he had not read Losse's book, nor had she read The Circle aside from an excerpt, and he did not want the novel to seem based on any extant companies. Upon the German release in summer 2014, Der Spiegel's Thomas Andre gave a favorable review, calling it a genre novel with simplistic fabrication meant to be obvious. German blogger Sascha Lobo called the book a 'demonization' of internet companies offering no actual arguments.

Film adaptation

A film adaptation directed by James Ponsoldt was released in April 2017. Emma Watson played Mae Holland, Tom Hanks played Bailey, Karen Gillan played Annie, Ellar Coltrane played Mercer, and John Boyega played Kalden. The film made over $40 million worldwide but received negative reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a rating of 16/100, with a critic consensus that the film 'spins aimlessly in its half-hearted exploration of timely themes.' Some plot points and characters were changed or removed to fit a two-hour runtime: the character Francis was removed, Annie's coma episode was cut, and the ending was altered to make Mae more sympathetic than in the book.