Dave Eggers writes a book about how technology is stealing our souls and humanity is doomed. I bought it, read it, and it was terrible.

The end.

But seriously, it just wasn’t a good book. It’s almost a laudable attempt at some kind of near-future dystopic fiction but it falls really short. Its possible that this criticism is invalid since Eggers might just be writing an extended allegory with the simple intention of saying ‘Hey, look, this is something I think is bad and maybe we should consider it!’ If so, then maybe I should cut him some slack.

On the other hand, The Circle really does feel like an attempt at writing The Capital C Criticism of our young and still-developing existence as online entities and how human relationships will be affected by the technology of social media in all its forms. The biggest problem with that is how unreasonable the whole thing is. Every single character is so flat it’s a miracle they don’t constantly cut themselves on each other, and this includes the general public in the world of the novel. Society blindly accepts every further intrusion into privacy without a whisper of protest. The main character is naive beyond any reasonable degree. The other characters are empty symbols for various aspects of the story Eggers is trying to tell and lack any real development.

In short, I was frustrated. It felt like it was aiming to be somewhere between satirical dystopic fiction and morality tale but the author just didn’t quite make it to either. It has some interesting ideas that aren’t explored as honestly as they could have been. The whole thing lacks subtlety and complexity. While I read it to the end, there were a few passages I skipped completely because they added nothing to the plot, added nothing to the characters, and had no real artistic value. Man, that sounds harsh, but it’s true. This is the first book I’ve read in a while that was so disappointing.