The Circle

So for the past couple of days I've been reading The Circle by Dave Eggars, and it's been freaking me out ever more.
Freaking me out in a good way, that is, because if a book grabs you so much that it leaves your heart pounding and your head spinning and yourself wondering whether you shouldn't be going around with a camera hanging from your neck recording your every move, then that book is really getting to you. And it's been a while since a new author (new to me at least, I'd never read anything by Eggars before) got to me like this.

I bought the novel because it had some great reviews in the newspaper. Later I checked the Amazon reviews, and although most of them are very positive, several complain about the book being badly researched and full of unnecessary dialogue. I don't understand those reviewers, because to me, the dialogue is the best bit.
In short, the novel is about a 24-year-old woman who starts work at the Circle, a Facebook/Google conglomerate proud of its community and transparency. At this job, you're not expected to go home at 5, you're expected to participate in community events, and then 'zing' (= tweet) about it to everyone else. Starting off with just one screen in front of her, the protagonist quickly upgrades to one of the most social and busy people in the company, constantly monitoring 5 screens, a headset, a microphone in her ear, and two wristbands.

If that alone isn't enough to set your heart racing, there is the ever increasing 1984-like surveillance. Children with chips implanted so that their parents will always know where they are, and they can't be abducted. Cars with logs so spouses will know where there other half has been. Cameras everywhere, in public and private spaces. People (especially politicians) with cameras around their necks recording their every move, meeting and conversation.
Scary as this may all sound, there are so many convincing rationales in the novel as to why this is a good thing, why having privacy is actually stealing someone else's experience, why not being transparent must mean that you have something to hide, and why having cameras record your every move will ultimately set you free to become a ' good person', that you almost start to believe it yourself. Those few characters in the novel talking sense, warning the protagonist of things to come, are quickly dismissed as lunatics. Interestingly, they proclaim those things that most of us take for granted.

In a society that is ever more discussing the value of privacy, the value of information, this novel came at exactly the right time. It has made me question why I do the things I do, why I want to share the things I share, and what privacy is actually really worth. It's one of those essential values that you only miss once you don't have it any more, and then it will be so hard to get back.

In short: read it. I'm about 2/3rds through and I have no way of predicting the ending, but if it will be anything like the rest of the novel, it will be something I will think about for quite a while to come.