A wonderful and timely sequel to The Circle. Per Atwood, everything Eggers captures in The Every finds its antecedent in today's world. This is classic speculative fiction. Similarly, per Orwell, the satire in the novel is well targeted; may be more Animal Farm than 1984, although readers may speculate along the way how the fate of Eggers, Delaney Wells, may differ from poor Winston Smith. The power of The Every is to take the consumer tech we all use in our daily lives and extend it to its logical conclusion. As has been well noted elsewhere, the gap between the extremes of communism and fascism are not so distant. Eggers correspondingly ponders on how much free will consumers are willing to sacrifice in exchange for convenience. Put another way, why would anyone fear restrictions on their freedom if they had nothing to hide? Constant surveillance in a panoptic world is not wholly implausible. Many may also simply not want to make choices. Eggers highlights effectively how much of what we take for granted in our everyday lives is already pushing us in this direction, perhaps an even more dangerous outcome when we fail to appreciate it is even occurring. Environmentalism is another target, and his (perhaps justified) concern here is how many freedoms/things we do as if granted, may be taken away by a benevolent dictatorship in the name of saving the planet. I found myself constantly thinking about The Every even when not reading it. There is also the somewhat dispiriting conclusion posed by Eggers: whether, if you can't beat them, you may simply just have to give up and join them. Ten out of ten.
By Dave Eggers