- On a sunny day in June, Mae Holland arrives for her first day of work at the Circle—a campus community that houses 10,000 employees of the world's largest and most innovative tech corporation.
- As Mae heads into the main building, she's met by Renata—a "Circler" who's been tasked with the job of showing Mae to her new desk.
- As Renata shows Mae around, Mae takes in the immaculately designed, gorgeously landscaped campus and is deeply impressed with everything she sees.
- When Renata and Mae step into the elevator in Mae's building, digital screens embedded in the elevator's walls flash an old (and embarrassing) photo from Mae's high school yearbook.
- Mae realizes that her college friend Annie Allerton—the person who helped her to land her new job at the Circle—is messing with her.
- Soon, Renata and Mae reach Mae's cubicle, and Mae is dismayed to find that it looks exactly like the cubicle she lived in and loathed at her last job. It's ugly and outdated, and radically at odds with the ultra-modern design of the rest of the building.
- Suddenly, Mae isn't feeling quite so optimistic about the Circle's utopian setup.
- As present-tense Mae sits at her ugly new cubicle at the Circle, a flashback gives us a look at Mae's previous job.
- Before being hired by the Circle, Mae was working for a utilities company in Longfield, California—her tiny, rural, barely-on-the-map hometown.
- Mae hated the job, hated the thought of being stuck in it for the rest of her life, and—on top of all that—hated the fact that her manager and coworkers actually expected her to care about the tedious work she had to do.
- Mae doesn't know what to make of her new/old cubicle.
- Thankfully, Mae's college chum Annie appears just a few seconds later and reveals that the awful cubicle is just another one of her twisted practical jokes.
- Now that Annie has had her fun, she takes Mae around to see the Circle's full campus.
- While they walk, Mae reminisces about the hectic schedule that Annie used to keep during their college days, and she's filled with admiration for her ultra-successful friend.
- As Annie shows Mae around the campus, Mae sees that "transparency" is a big theme at the Circle.
- Many of the Circle's buildings have been designed with glass walls, glass ceilings, and glass floors, and it's easy to look around and see dozens of people going about their working lives at any given moment.
- Annie stops every now and then to introduce Mae to various people who work at the company—all of them doing exciting, innovative work that Annie describes as being "world rocking," "life-changing," or "fifty years ahead of anyone else" (1.3.36).
- Annie also shows Mae a room that Mae isn't technically supposed to see: the personal library of Eamon Bailey, one of the Circle's Three Wise Men.
- While she's at it, Annie also gives Mae—and the novel's readers—the rundown on those same Wise Men.
- When Annie gets called away to work, she passes Mae off to Denise and Josiah, two "company ambassadors" (1.4.3) who finish giving Mae the grand tour.
- As Mae and her guides move from place to place, it becomes increasingly clear that the Circle's main campus is like a miniature city.
- By the end of the day, Mae feels absolutely sure that she has been given the keys to utopia.
- As Mae's first day at the Circle draws to a close, she follows Annie to a huge outdoor party on campus.
- The company wine goes to Mae's head pretty quickly, and she soon finds herself separated from Annie and wandering around on her own, observing and hanging out with various groups of people as she goes.
- When Mae eventually decides to go looking for more wine, she realizes that there's none left at either the buffet or the bar.
- Fortunately (or not) for Mae, a stranger overhears her asking about the wine, and he tells her to follow him. She does, and the young man leads her to a man-made waterfall beside one of the campus buildings. From the pool underneath the waterfall, he pulls two bottles of wine.
- Annie and the stranger—who soon introduces himself as Francis—sit together on the fringes of the party and start to drink the wine.
- Francis does his best to be flirty with Mae, but he puts his foot in his mouth when he pays her a thoughtless, backhanded compliment.
- Mae decides to let it slide, and she does a little flirting of her own.
- Then, from out of the fire-lit darkness, Annie appears. After ribbing Francis a little bit, she tells him to scram so that she can be alone with her friend.
- Francis does scram, and Annie and Mae sit together and marvel at the wonders of the Circle.
- After the party, Mae heads back to her apartment and tries to sleep.
- When she wakes up, she's filled with joy to know that she gets to go back and work at the Circle for realsies.
- Back at the Circle, Renata takes Mae to her actual desk in the Customer Experience office, where Mae is introduced to a stream of Circlers who sort out her payroll and human resources paperwork, then walk her through her on-the-job responsibilities.
- After Mae is given the rundown, she gets to work. Her first morning goes really well, and she is thrilled by the positive feedback she gets from everyone around her.
- At the end of her first week at the Circle, Mae is feeling great. She's good at her job, she's receiving positive feedback from her supervisors and fellow Circlers, and she's developing customer contacts from all over the world.
- Mae and Annie meet up for lunch on Friday, and Annie introduces Mae to two new Circlers. As the four of them chat, Mae learns a few big things:
- 1) Francis Garaventa—the guy she met at the company party earlier in the week—has been telling his friends about her.
- 2) Some of the work that people do at the Circle is kept highly secret from everyone else.
- 3) Francis has a tragic family history. He had two sisters who were abducted and murdered as children, and their deaths have inspired him to create the child safety program that he's working on.
- After lunch, Mae follows Annie to the Great Hall for the company's weekly "Dream Friday" presentation.
- Today, the presentation is being delivered by Eamon Bailey himself, and Mae is thrilled to be watching him speak in person.
- Bailey unveils a brand-new product that the Circle will soon be marketing: a tiny camera, about "the shape and size of a lollipop" (1.8.25), that can be easily hidden anywhere and connected to a live satellite feed.
- According to Bailey, the cameras will have all kinds of implications: they'll let people check the weather at their favorite beaches; they'll let people keep constant eyes on their homes; they'll let citizens and activists record human rights violations for the whole world to see—and shoot, they'll make the whole world accessible to the naked eye, once enough of them have been activated by energetic, motivated people across the world.
- As Bailey tells the crowd, the cameras will be called "SeeChange" (1.8.59), and they're going to change the world.
- On Saturday, Mae's parents take her out to dinner to celebrate her new job at the Circle. They're thrilled by her success, and they make a point of telling her so.
- After supper, Mae accompanies her parents back to the bed-and-breakfast where they're staying for the weekend. There, they fill her in on some of the insurance battles they've been having as they try to manage Mae's father's multiple sclerosis.
- The next day, Mae and her parents have lunch together, but Mae's father gets tuckered out partway through the meal and heads back to the car to sleep.
- Although everyone does their best to be cheery, Mae can't help but fret over her father's condition—not to mention the financial hardship that it's causing her parents.
- Since Mae has the rest of her Sunday afternoon still ahead of her, she decides not to head back to her apartment right away. Instead, she heads to her favorite kayaking shop and rents a kayak to take out onto the bay.
- Being alone out on the water is soothing for Mae, and she makes it to the other side of the bay before long.
- There, Mae marvels at the beautiful landscape and has a good cry about her father.
- When she's finally ready to head back, Mae thinks of how good it felt to feel as though she had the bay all to herself for a little while.