The Every is the biggest tech company in the world, controlling more and more of people’s everyday lives. But two young idealists, Delaney and Wes, believe things have gone too far and plan to join the company to bring it down from the inside...

The Every is the sequel to Dave Eggers’ 2013 novel The Circle and, like the previous book, it’s a mix of elements that succeed and fail to make for another ok dystopian novel.

Like too many sequels, The Every is very similar to the previous story with little variation, though there are of course some new features added. The Circle (a company like Apple/Google/Facebook) has now gobbled up and merged with the other giant tech firms, including Amazon (referred to only as “the jungle”), and rebranded as The Every to become the biggest company in human history. Mae Holland, the protagonist of the first book (the Emma Watson character if you just saw the Netflix movie), is now head of the company with former leader Bailey (the Tim Honks character) edged out.

And that’s really it in terms of how far things have progressed since the end of the first book. There’s obviously been a lot of advances in tech since 2013 with smart devices now pervading most people’s homes, so details like that are worked into the Every’s insidious reach (ie. “Ovals” = Apple Watches/FitBits). The message of the first book remains - privacy good, social media bad - with a heavier focus on personal freedoms and how much people are willing to sacrifice for the sake of convenience, which some of the leaps might be convincing or not, depending on your view of humanity and where we’re headed. Like Mercer in The Circle, there’s another lecturing anti-tech voice in the form of Agarwal, Delaney’s college professor.

The Every also has the same problem I had with The Circle in that the ideas Delaney and Wes pitch (designed to enrage people and bring the company down) become adopted far too quickly and easily with no nuance in the reactions around the world. Every single idea is a masterstroke without any setbacks which is crazy. They’re new hires - and nobody else at The Every, all of them geniuses, had already come up with these ideas?

The reactions of people to these new ideas is also vastly simplistic. Online behaviour is not real world behaviour - just because some people may not like a company or person and will say as much on social media doesn’t mean they’ll stop buying a product by that company or boycott that person’s output. I mean, banning travel and pets - and people just go along with it? That’s just not convincing. The reality is that though there is a lot of outrage on sites like Twitter, most people in real life are reasonable and wouldn’t behave like the minority of loud voices online.

But I get it - like The Circle, Eggers is writing a sort of parable and needs for these things to just be. He’s not shooting for realism. Still, I don’t find his core message of gloom and doom towards big tech that remarkable or persuasive. While you could argue we’re already there, I just don’t think we’re headed towards this authoritarian nightmare that Eggers is portraying and the views he’s presenting are a bit silly and myopic - all humans being controlled like mindless puppets? Please. Look at how many people in our world are refusing to take a life-saving vaccine from a horrendous disease. We don’t behave as one as a species.

The story is interesting - up to a point. It’s fun to see Delaney “rotate” (spend a week or two) through the Every’s many departments and Eggers has done a remarkable job of imagining a convincing tech corporation. The effect is like reading an Orwellian Alice in Wonderland/Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with more than an air of The Prisoner about it. But it gets repetitive after a while and a bit dull once you realise this is basically the rest of the novel. Because the plot is nebulous and naively futile too, the ending is somewhat anticlimactic and underwhelming.

Some episodes felt unnecessary, like the whole homeless people living outside the campus thing and Delaney’s group decide to give them free tech, but I liked the sub-plot of a covert resistance in the company - of others with the mindset of Delaney and Wes - and whether or not it was real or a ploy to weed out actual dissenters. Delaney’s interrogation by someone who may or may not be an ally was very compelling, as was Mae’s Darth Vader-esque transformation from the character we saw in the first book and the person she is now.

Other aspects of the story were very clever. Like how, when in the Every cafeteria, Delaney and Wes have to speak in an extremely basic, almost pidgin-like language, to fool the AI, and Everys like Kiki who misuse multisyllabic words they don’t understand in sentences to hit absurd arbitrary vocabulary quotas for their Ovals. The commentary of how AI/algorithms have made us all talk gibberish instead of communicating clearly is brilliant. Some points are banal though, like how cult-like these companies can seem, and how too much constant information leads to poor sleep, burn-out and stress - duh.

There’s a lot in this novel that’s very imaginative, but, like the first book, The Every left me underwhelmed and unconvinced as to its overall message. I haven’t given up that many personal freedoms and I don’t expect people in general would be willing to give up as much as the people in the book’s world have. And this idea that companies like The Every will only lead to Orwellian futures - eh… I don’t know. I think Eggers is a bit too hung up on an either/or dichotomy and can’t see the myriad variations on where we go from here - which is fine, he’s not a soothsayer, it just makes his story less powerful.

The Every is essentially an updated version of The Circle. If you liked that, you’ll probably like this and for those who haven’t read The Circle, you don’t really need to read it first to pick up The Every. It’s a bit too long and repetitive in places and isn’t as powerful as I think it wants to be, but I found it to be a sometimes intriguing and compelling read - a decent, if forgettable, dystopian fiction.

Title - The Every
Author - Dave Eggers
Release Date - 16th November
Page Count - 512
Read Time - 16hrs
Rating - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 stars

#bananaskam is coming soon.

Eggers does an amazing job of narrating society and commerce of today, merging them together and giving us an entirely plausible, and let’s face it, probable future. We are already a society that craves attention be it famous or infamous but imagine a future where all social media platforms are exponentially magnified to the point where everyone knows everything about you and you are willingly manipulated into what you eat, buy and think.

In The Every we follow De Laney who is intent on bringing down this all consuming mega organisation as it ruined her family’s lives. She teams up with the much loved self-confessed anti tech, but tech guru, Wes, her best friend and flat-mate. Together they attempt to disrupt from within by feeding the organisation bad ideas in the hope that consumers will be outraged and boycott the company.

The Every is a stark look into consumerism and how the public will follow what is perceived as popular. Eggers pokes and prods and satirically mocks us as a species, how we are morally outraged at everything yet ever so eager to have our own piece of the pie.

There are some questionable scenes in the book that I cannot see happening, most notable a section where De Laney takes a group of staff on a day out, I cannot imagine humans doing away with common sense all together and a future where mob mentality results in a worldwide…

The subject matter is often polarising as on one hand we, as societal sheep, mindlessly following, ensures our freedoms are removed, even if we don’t know it. But on the other, the benefits to our health and the health of the environment was improving vastly - is there a right answer?

On a fictional level I really enjoyed the book but I couldn’t help but feel sermonised or preached at for the entirety of the novel, but there is a kind of irony and dichotomy in the subject matter - we have consumerism and supply and demand, one can’t exist without the other but to remove either has an untold impact on the world.

This was so close to a 5 star read but I really didn’t like the ending, but as with all books, reviews are subjective and the next review will have a differing viewpoint. Happy reading all.

The Every is a sequel to The Circle and if you have read this or seen the film, nicely self-referenced within, then you are not getting anything new in terms of story. What you do get, if you enjoyed the original, is more and more ideas and logical extensions of current uses of technology and social media.
I like a book of ideas encompassed in a narrative. I found it all fascinating and by turns horrifying - the Friendy app which reads facial expressions and verbal intonation etc to rate your friendships - and also beneficial, like the information on how much carbon a product or company has produced.
There were definite positives to some of the technology but coming at the expense of personal freedoms and choice. There is a lot to debate here and it would make a good reading group choice.
Delaney was a good character; the well-meaning developer who wants to sabotage the Every from the inside by producing ever more outrageous apps that infringe people’s rights but finding that they are all taken on with eagerness. As it neared the end I could see what was going to happen because, despite technology and regulated lives, there is always the random human factor that is self-centred and egotistical.

A long book but the characters and plot were weak and seemed to serve as a vehicle for the ideas, which are extensive and genius. There were some really funny character observations and actions but I had to skim read parts and some ideas were a bit cliché (i.e. tech person with nature-filled upbringing has been done before). However, the book has stayed in my mind and I have discussed many examples that are relevant to now (cancel culture, sustainability, tracking etc, and Eggers takes each one to a satirised extreme) - the sheer terror that could be our future if a social media company had that control. The events that happen are brilliant, clever and frightening. So it was a super read - just a slog!

Interesting & horrifying in a good way. But a bit simplistic and too long as well I’m afraid.
Thank you Penguin Fandom House UK and Netgalley for the ARC.

After the company “The Circle” took over the Internet, it bought an online retailer named after a south American jungle to also operate online buying and selling. With the new name “The Every”, Mae Holland can now control large parts of the people’s every-day life. Delaney Wells has done a lot to become a part of The Every, yet not out of fascination for the company but because she is seeking revenge. The company is too strong to be attacked from the outside, she needs to get inside to destroy it. Together with her roommate Wes, she develops a strategy: making more and more absurd suggestions for apps so that people see what the company is really after. However, their idea does not work, instead of being repelled, people eagerly embrace the new ideas which limit their lives increasingly.

I was fascinated by Dave Egger’s novel “The Circle” a couple of years ago. “The Every”, the second instalment, shows the mission to destroy what he has created. Delaney Wells is a clever and courageous protagonist who consistently follows her goal. Yet, the novel could not fully meet my expectations, it was a bit lengthy at times and the developments were quite foreseeable.

Delaney’s strategy of proposing ever more absurd apps to control people – which words they use, rating their interaction with others and their capacity of being a “friend” – push the development further and further. The line of argumentation that The Every uses is quite convincing: who wouldn’t prefer to live in a safe place where people use words which do not create bad feelings in others, who wouldn’t like to be a better person and most of all, who wouldn’t be willing to abstain from harming behaviour to protect nature?

Eggers just goes one step further and shows how the characters fall prey to the traps which actually are quite obvious. However, this is what they want since it makes life easier. They do not have to make decisions anymore, everything is foreseeable and in good order. Thinking for yourself is exhausting, so why not hand it over do the company? Even though this aspect is well established, I could have done with less apps, the twentieth invention does not add any new aspect to the plot.

A small group of anarchists tries to resist, yet they are too weak and the intellectuals are not heard. Wes’ development throughout the plot, unfortunately, is also very predictable, I would have preferred some surprises here. Eggers certainly can to better than just use well-known set pieces.

The idea is great and the protagonist is well-created but the author could have made more out of it. Some scenes – Delaney’s trip to the ocean and the aftermaths – are brilliant as is the line of argumentation that the company uses to manipulate. Yet, it is a bit lengthy and unoriginal in its progress.

Thank you so, so much for the opportunity to read this early. It was one of my most eagerly anticipated thriller/dystopian releases and I was not disappointed. I won't give away the plot, but I had such a riot and I loved my reading experience. Provocative, sobering, thought provoking, exciting - go read it now!

The Every is another clever, provocative dystopian thriller from Dave Eggers which follows on from The Circle. The Circle imagined a world dominated by a single tech monopoly (an amalgamation of Google, Facebook and Apple) in which online anonymity and privacy have been abolished. The Every picks up the story five years after "the Circle had bought an ecommerce behemoth named after a South American jungle, and the acquisition created the richest company the world had ever known."

Mae Holland, the protagonist of The Circle, is now the CEO of the Every, despite never having "brought a significant idea to the the company in all her years there". Mae remains a distant and shadowy figure for most of the novel, however, and instead we see things from the perspective of Delaney Wells, another new employee joining the company. Unlike Mae, who starts out naive and impressionable, Delaney joins the Every with her eyes open, intent on brining it down from the inside. Her plan is to pitch ideas which represent such an assault on human freedom and choice that they will end up destroying the Circle, but she struggles as she discovers that seemingly no idea is too ludicrous for the Circle to develop or for society to accept.

Like The Circle, The Every asks profound questions about where our society is headed and how readily we will surrender our freedom and privacy. I was impressed by the scope of Eggers' world-building, as he considers the impact of tech giants on every aspect of human society, including economics, education, healthcare, law enforcement, and perhaps most importantly, human relationships. And although Eggers never allows us to lose sight of his mistrust of these corporations, the ethical questions the novel raises are nuanced and challenging: for instance, what intrusion on our privacy should we be prepared to accept if it will eradicate crime, or domestic violence? And like many current dystopian novels, the climate crisis looms large in Eggers' writing, but he takes a different tack, as the Every proposes solutions which will slash carbon emissions; however, the novel invites us to consider whether this is something we should accept at any cost.

Despite the seriousness and urgency of the issues the novel explores, it is also very funny in places, particularly in its lampooning of corporate earnestness and groupthink. An excursion Delaney organises to watch elephant seals mating at a local beach brings out the worst in her colleagues and reveals just how infantilised they have become by the pervasiveness of technology in their lives. And there is fun to be had at the expense of branding, as Delaney listens to a pitch for a travel concept entitled 'Stop and Look': "Onscreen, the name of the program was rendered as Stop+Lük. Sweet lord God, Delaney thought. She hadn't seen the umlaut coming." There is even a knowing reference to Tom Hanks' role in the film adaptation of The Circle.

For the most part, the vision of the future Eggers creates feels eerily plausible. (Indeed, at the time of writing this review, British politicians look set to fulfil one of the key predictions from The Circle as they debate ending online anonymity), but I did find the rate at which new concepts and products could be developed and implemented stretched credibility in places (sometimes just a few days or weeks from pitching to worldwide adoption). And though never less than compelling, I did wonder whether it needed to be quite as long as it is as the plot began to feel a little repetitious by about halfway through.

Overall, however, I found this both an enjoyable and sobering read. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

I found this book to be clever, witty and very very depressing. It makes 1984 seem like a light read in comparison. Delaney tries to infiltrate a global authoritarian regime and is predictably doomed to failure because it sees everything. I didn't need this book to hammer home how many corners of my life are already commodified.