True Failure

Ben just lost his job, but he won’t fess up to his wife Tara. Instead, he claims he’s devoting his time to getting an appearance on the wildly popular reality TV show, Big Shot, where he’ll be able to pitch his unique entrepreneurial idea. Meanwhile, Tara is lying to the parents of the children at her day care, turning in fabricated accounts of the kids’ daily activities. And Marcy, the producer of Big Shot, has told her coworkers she’s taking some time to “unplug,” the better to avoid explaining her real reasons for getting away from the office…

Lies are the air True Failure‘s characters breathe: lies to themselves and lies to others, lies that comfort and confound. In this extraordinary novel, worthy of a place alongside the work of Joy Williams and Charles Portis, Alex Higley pokes a hole in the greatest and most perfidious lie of our time—that we are all either successes or failures in life—with warmth, wit, and wounding observation.

Praise for True Failure

“If Joy Williams lived in the Chicago suburbs and watched reality television, she might write a novel approaching the manic brilliance of Alex Higley’s True Failure. Higley mines the American imaginary and surfaces holding gems of truth, tragedy, and hope. Also—this book is damn funny.” —Miranda Popkey, author of Topics of Conversation

“Immaculate sentences and freaky-deep (and funny!) character psychology give True Failure page-by-page pleasures that build to startling heartbreak.” —Dan Hornsby, author of Sucker

“In True Failure, Higley’s characters struggle to reinvent themselves in the shadow of twenty-first century capitalism. Manic, obsessive, lovesick, they try to find meaning in a world that has abandoned and ignored them; Higley lets them blunder towards profundity in a story that is both harrowing and hilarious. Alex Higley is a thrilling new talent, a master of finding the uncanny in the prosaic, the comedy in misery. True Failure is a moving, deftly executed, and wonderful surprise.” —J. Robert Lennon, author of Broken River

“Alex Higley’s True Failure is both wry and heartfelt, a story of a marriage, of a man who is made and remade to suit those who are watching. It’s a novel that asks if identity is just personality in our modern era. I didn’t close my mouth as I read; I couldn’t, because I was always either shocked or laughing. It’s a funny and sobering read that sneaks up on you and then stays, like a shadow you can’t admit is all yours now.” —Lindsay Hunter, author of Hot Springs Drive

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