The Every: A novel

In a world much like our own, inundated with an increasing flood of data, a mega tech behemoth threatens to save the world through self-imposed transparency. The future of what it means to be human and environmental survival hang in the balance. The protagonist, with a clear sense of the danger, launches a plan to infiltrate the corporation and to sabotage it from the inside out. The narrative style is straightforward if not particularly literary and the voice of academic reason is a bit pedantic. But overall, the book does an excellent job of depicting the dangers of an AI and algorithmic-driven world run amok. A very good read!

The Every really is Dave Eggers at his best. I was torn between 4 and 5 stars - I try to save 5 stars for masterpieces. This wan't that...but pretty damn good.The book is a vision of a near future where Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook have joined together to form the Every. They just want to make the world better, whether the world likes it or not. It is very relevant to our times.The protagonist gets a job at the Every to try to destroy it from within. Her primary strategy is to create horrendous new apps that will surely offend the world with their invasiveness. Naturally, that doesn't happen. The world loves them!Eggers gets to work out his imagination on these apps that score your friends, make sure you don't say negative things, and basically apply a score to every element of your life. In exchange for privacy and freedom, the world gets convenience and peace. It's easy to imagine the real world signing up for that.The names of the apps are wonderful: Friendy, AreYouSure?, Stop+Luk (I left off the umlaut) and so many more. Eggers could definitely get a job in product management. It's all a little too realistic at times.The book is fun, fast moving, the characters are believable enough for the purposes here. Dave Eggers has a relaxed, easy, readable prose that serves the story. The end is kind of predictable, but satisfying. Go ahead - read it. You'll enjoy.

If you were to ask me, am I a Dave Eggers fan, I honestly don’t know how I’d respond. I’ve read almost every one of his books, so that would seem to indicate that yes, I am. I also think he is a really amazing writer. And yet, there’s something about his writing and novels that always leaves me a touch unsettled (and not in a good way). Perhaps it’s the relentless fatalism, or maybe it’s just that his novels always seem to meander and lose their way at some point.At any rate, The Every is one of his best. I’d put it up there with A Hologram for the King and well ahead of his more forgettable efforts (ahem, Heroes of the Frontier). At times it is really, really funny, just dripping with sardonic wit. At other times it is startlingly on the nose. I think it probably reaches for too much, and doesn’t quite grasp it, but it’s close if you don’t get weighed down in the minutiae. I feel like every Eggers novel could have been so much more, but this one leaves less on the table than most of his others.So read it if you’re a fan, or at least an erstwhile admirer like myself. If the subject matter intrigues you, I think this is also one of the better modern tech dystopia novels that I have read. I find that they all fall short to one degree or another, but, again, this one comes tantalizingly close.

So, with the first book, “the circle“ had to slip in a review when I was 60% through that novel. I felt the same need to do that with this one. First and foremost, if you do not read the prequel you will not get the full benefit of reading this one. To understand what led up to the crazy world described in this book do you need the context of the first one. Both novels are Orwellian in their nature. Only big brother is not Orwells big brother, but something that feels succinctly apropos. At this point, 68% through the novel I have to admit that it is much better than the prequel. That is not to take away anything from the prequel as it stood on its own, Although the ending could have used a little more oomph.As when the first novel, the characters and ideas are over the top like a pole vaulting champion. However, that is what makes it so much fun. If I could rename this book I would title it as, “if millennials ruled the world.“As I contemplated the ending I don't think I could have been more let down. It's a conundrum for me. On one hand I enjoyed the whacky world and OTT portrait of a world gone mad. Mr. Eggers may turn out to be prophetic in in the ways of the World May turn, but oh God I hope not. In the world where society has gone off the rails he offered no way out, and instead killed a protagonist. He ended any chance for redemption and turned what was comically dark into something that was truly dark, and not what I expected at all. Is he a proponent for this new world? I believe so, and so much of the world is beginning to echo his world of corporate domination. For me, he turned in 0TT, campy story into one of what will surely be a true modern day horror.I Drop my four star review that I posted I was 68% done with the book to a two star review once I hit the ending. I warned that this might happen. I did not lower it to two stars to discourage future readers, but to truly reflect my disappointment at how he ended this. But I am mean this book should be red by all, but I am too upset at the ending. I am upset because I see a version of this world he painted coming true as I sit here and write this.

A great book. Not great literature, but a great book in that it makes you think, reflect, and even laugh in rueful acknowledgement. I was constantly looking over my shoulder in fear, laughing uncontrollably at the new app names and concepts, then agape at the final discussion leading to the climactic plot twist. This is a loose sequel to the same author’s The Circle. You don’t need to read that first but that book, too, has some of the same qualities. Where are we heading? The Every knows.

The narrative was so acerbic, so apt, that I wasn't tempted to skim-read once, despite the 577 pages; my irrational fear of Eggers' fictional eye-scan software? I even forgive the author for such a long novel. Yes, it could have been edited down, but it was packed with cutting edge satire, and I laughed to myself from start to finish.'The Every' is a cross between McGoohan's 'The Prisoner' and Orwell's '1984' but bang up to date. I wouldn't even call it dystopian, because the ring of truth echoes throughout. Although set in the US, and created by an American author, the details have universality. Sadly.This is a tale of a nobody who hates the proliferation of the multinational post-capitalist control of freedom, and who wrangles with the temptation to be pulled in. Those who resist are painted as chaotic and anti-ecological, which is interesting. Will it really only take corporate control to save the planet?I loved the multiplicity of pointed barbs and jibes at our contemporary society, and the ending of the book was satisfying, even vaguely expected. Definitely worth persevering to the very end!'The Every' works well as a standalone book, but I will be reading 'The Circle' next ...

I've read several books by Dave Eggers and have loved most but not all of them. I loved The Circle though so was curious when I saw he had written a follow-up novel eight years after the original. During those years many elements of The Circle have come true so I was intrigued to see how much further he could stretch the possibilities.It is a big chunk of a book but the version I have has got fairly thick paper. It has 577 pages split into 45 chapters that are, ironically I'm sure, labelled using Roman numerals.It's an uncomfortable start with each chapter being listed, timed and rated - just a taste of the world to be described. There is also a warning, telling the reader not to try to guess a year in which the plot is set.The Every takes the environment and society created during The Circle. Delaney gets a job at the company with the intention of bringing it down. As she gets to understand the setup, she acts as an observer, encouraging the reader to question everything. She shares her understanding of the mechanics and mental attitude within her surroundings.It's easy to mock the slavish devotion of the many employees to their gadgets, monitoring apps and targets but then it is worth stepping back and considering the functionalities of the watches/phones that many people use in the real world - we are being reminded to breathe, stand and walk on a regular basis. Of course, The Every takes monitoring to the extreme but this book definitely shows the possibilities of technology moving into the near future, also how it can be used to engineer society and the attitudes within.I would suggest reading The Circle before this book. It is not essential but there are many themes carried forward. I'd leave it a while between each book though as there is duplication and it's important to experience the shock of the surveillance for a second time when starting this book. There are some very clever references to the previous book, pointing at one stage to the film that was made and that it starred Tom Hanks. Also in a department that measures fiction there is an analysis of this novel itself.I can't help but see parallels to 1984. I would be fascinated to see what George Orwell would think about the world today and would hope he would be pleased that there are novels around like this one which put the spotlight on extreme surveillance.Throughout the book there is much time given to the gradual decline of Hurricane, Wes's dog. This is a fairly obvious metaphor for the decline of free will and shows the wearing away of freedom itself. There are many other metaphors used.The most scary aspect of this novel is that it is all possible with available technology. Everything is imaginable and you can see that we are moving in this direction. Journalism is losing it's influence, populist politicians are succeeding and surveillance is increasing. Of course, the pace in the real world is not at fast as Dave Egger describes but things are changing.Delaney keeps pushing Every to become more ridiculous with her new ideas, hoping that it will implode at some point but to no avail. As a reader, every new idea seems to be controversial but a brief pause for thought will act as a reminder that most of these things are happening at some level already.Much consideration is given to contradiction. How can an entity be good and evil at the same time? Many of the concepts featured here are striving to achieve good but do it bad effects. It can only be human input that gives a balanced view and we see Delaney being portrayed as the only balanced human on earth. Of course, The Every campus is small but it's reach and influence is infinite.

This is 100 per cent worth reading. David Eggers is extremely witty in all senses of that word. His tropes, flights of fancy and inspirations will make you laugh outside at the same time as you grimace at the way he demonstrates control of the cybersphere is turning into control of our civilisation an thence of our psyche. The problem is that satire, even when it is executed as well as this is, has a distancing effect on the reader and tells against the kind of engagement with character central to the novel form. My impression is that "The Every" tackles this episodically. We read sections directed at character development followed by sections designed to lance some egregious activity or mode in our world. Sometimes, and particularly towards the endling, this doesn't work. But yes, definitely worth reading.

I can't give it two stars as the effort involved in writing the book is evident, there are tons of new ideas and the author has a brilliant imagination. However reading it made me sad and bored in equal measures. It's far too long, with masses of detail and conversations that hammer home the same points again and again about the dangers of surveillance technology, but don't move the story forward. Most of the characters are two dimensional and flat, and the ones that you are routing for such as Delaney and Wes act in a disappointing way. It's certainly not a novel to read for enjoyment but I felt I had to get to the end just to see if it turned out the way I feared it would, and it did.

"Here You Are Heard" (p.404) is the equivalent for 'The Every' of those 1984-style slogans from its predecessor, 'The Circle'. The Circle became the Every and remains a global company far bigger even that that firm which has brought us together, dear reader. I bought my copy of 'The Every' through Amazon and am not one of those souls commended in it for having kept independent bookshops alive. The last time, before reading this pair by Dave Eggers, that I read a biting satire on corporate insatiability, it was 'Thank You For Smoking', in which in 1994 Christopher Buckley told the tale of Nick Naylor of the Academy for Tobacco Studies. This one ends up with a hint of 'Minority Report'.In 'The Every', convenience means surveillance, over which the customer has as much control as a child ‘with a toy steering wheel’ on the car’s back seat (p.407). All people are under its ‘soothing shadow’ (p.400) and they are afraid to act – like Ottomans summoned before the grille behind which the Sultan might be listening. The novel is almost a picaresque within the walls of the Every until p.400 or so, when the new ventures and people’s willingness to go along with them stop being just comedy, and a dystopian narrative more like 'The Circle' returns. The shark-like Stenton re-emerges. It's too long, and too obvious – 'The Circle' was both these things too, and this is longer – but with some great passages and a ludicrous leitmotif of people wearing revealing clothing in a society that indicts them for ogling.