The Every by Dave Eggers review – scathing big-tech satire sequel

The writer's follow-up to The Circle is longer and baggier, but still fuelled by rage at the power of Silicon Valley and its numbing effect on the human race

Kudos to Dave Eggers. In this follow-up to the admirable, big-tech, dystopian thriller The Circle (which you needn't have read to enjoy the current book), he again squares up to the new enemies of everything untamed and brilliant in humankind. If you meant to read Shoshana Zuboff's important and demanding The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, but were too worn down by surveillance capitalism's intrusions to get round to it, The Every tackles the same concerns from a shared perspective of humanist outrage, in the form of a gulpable fictive entertainment.

The Circle's titular startup turned metaphysical empire (think: Googlebook) has merged with an unmistakable e-commerce site referred to, doubtless for legal reasons, only by its nickname: the jungle". Messianically rebranded as The Every, the corporation is now run by Mae Holland, The Circle's fast-rising, newbie protagonist. Under Holland, The Every pursues its heedless agenda of a worldwide, soft totalitarian order of mass behavioural compliance through surveillance. However, in part due to a corporate culture of timid self-scrutiny, there is a dearth of new ideas on campus. Enter another newbie, Delaney Wells, radicalised by her years studying under anti-monopoly crusader Professor Agarwal (surely based on the aforementioned Zuboff, Agarwal articulates the novel's moral and intellectual conscience in letters to her former protege). Bent on bringing down The Every from the inside, Delaney conspires with her housemate Wes, a big-tech resisting trog", to sabotage the company. The pair settle on a strategy of terroristic accelerationism: if they can introduce enough vile or moronic apps into The Every's portfolio, it might trigger a popular insurrection that will bring about the company's downfall.