PRIVACY IS THEFT 
 Now here is a fascinating piece of social commentary. Eggers is not solely a writer here, but a preacher or a prophet of doom. 
 The short course of the novel is that a technology conglomerate, Circle, has connected all social interaction, and possibly all human activity, to the Internet. not just as a means of social interaction, but instead of total social control. Our protagonist, Mae, is first enchanted by the lures of a pleasant and aggressively accommodating job offer, but becomes totally consumed by the desire for social approval and expanding the reach of the Circle as a desk soldier. 
 I admit I was unnecessarily harsh on Eggers in the past, and I am humbled for it, for here he is lightning. His writing sparks with careful thought and detail about the new media, from the catchy invented words (Zing!) to the subtle characterization of the company's executives and the mechanisms of power. Tiny start-ups or competitors are 'plankton', which only briefly exist to be consumed by the leviathan. 
 This is an outlandish world, but frightening because we can recognize so much of it. The expansion of corporate power has been a troubling trend already. There is understandable concern about the breaches of privacy by intelligence agencies, but what happens when we turn around and give up our lives so willingly and so joyously to private corporations, as though one source of power differs from the other?