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.
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.