In the mid 2010s, a huge California tech company called The Circle, staffed by young idealist utopians collects information on everyone in the world, and basically takes over every aspect of everyone’s life, all in the name of improving their quality of life. From equipping all children with embedded monitors and thereby eliminating abductions to cameras with facial recognition worn by almost everyone everywhere and placed invisibly in billions of sites, to politicians ‘going transparent’ with audio and camera monitoring 24/7, nothing is beyond the reach of The Circle. The extent of sharing of info is perhaps best illustrated when a Scottish online follower of Mae Holland, the main character, who like all Circle employees has become what would now be called an ‘Influencer’, correlates her online DNA markers with her online vital signs and points out to her Circle doctor that her diet contains too much nitrates for someone with those characteristics thereby increasing her risk of cancer. There is constant skillful preying on the Circlers’ and the publics’ need to connect with others and to satisfy huge unacknowledged egos. Besides the Three Wise Men of The Circle leadership, there is the inevitable ‘Gang Of Forty that decides on all major projects.
Sprinkled throughout is enough graphic sex and vulgar language to satisfy the most prurient reader. There are a few weak attempts to develop suspense such as when Mae kayaks across the shipping lanes off California’s coast in a stolen unlit kayak at night or threatens sabotage of her former fat boyfriend’s artistic creations after previously promoting them online, but they fizzle quickly. The former episode is used by one of the Three Wise Men of the Circle leadership to make her confess publicly to her millions of followers and then spout and promote their meaningless slogans (and feel good about doing so). Still later, the high-tech search by millions of Circle followers that leads to the death of the reclusive former boyfriend is distorted by one of the Wise Men as a reason for them to adopt ever higher tech solutions to social problems.
The writer’s imagination is enormous and the plot is complex but not hard to follow. There re no chapter divisions and the whole story spans less than a year. A visual depiction of a shark devouring everything in a large aquarium serves as a symbol for the Circle.
Picture a future world where Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Jack Ma control everything and everyone, spewing Chairman Xi Jinping aphorisms and jingoistic meaningless slogans such as
Sharing is Caring
Privacy is Theft
Secrets are Lies
and you have some image of what is portrayed in this dystopian novel-one that has become frighteningly ever closer to reality.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thanks, Ian and Vera.
The Passionate Reader 