A novel by Alex Higley
February 25, 2025 • 5.5 x 8.25 • 280 pages • 9781566897136
A twisting examination of life under late capitalism and the deceptions we inhabit to invent our own success stories.
Ben just lost his job, but he won't fess up to his wife Tara. Instead, while he claims to be going to work, he's actually devoting his time to auditioning for 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.
About the Author
Alex Higley is the author of Cardinal (nominated for the PEN/Bingham Award) and Old Open. He is a founding editor of Great Place Books. Raised in Colorado, he currently lives southwest of Chicago.
Praise for True Failure
A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2025
A Millions Most Anticipated Book of Winter 2025
“Higley serves up a charming story of flailing characters and their intersecting deceits. He raises the stakes as their stories entwine. The result is a delightfully offbeat tale.” —Publishers Weekly
“A hilarious entrant into the annals of capitalist flailing. Things go madcap quickly without ever losing a very real sense of heart.” —Drew Broussard, Literary Hub
“True Failure is delightfully—and sometimes frustratingly—bizarre, its humorous touch light but present enough to establish that Higley isn’t laughing at his characters, fumbling and self-destructive as they might be. With an ultimately empathetic spirit, Higley crafts a world that feels at once familiar and uncanny.” —Grace Novarr, Necessary Fiction
“In True Failure, Alex Higley examines the relationship between who we want to be and who we end up becoming. The path is not always a straight line, and the destination may not be where we expected. The journey is the point.” —Ian MacAllen, Chicago Review of Books
“Readers of Alex Higley’s third book will encounter the work of a writer coming into his full powers as a skilled ironist and cultural critic. ” —Christine Sneed, ZYZZYVA
“If all fiction is based on secrets and lies, this caustically comic novel by Higley takes that theme to a new level.” —Booklist
“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.” —Daniel 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
“True Failure is the smartest, funniest book about contemporary life in America I've read in years. It's full of relatable cringe and painful pleasures; a book where we drink too many vodka minis in the car in the office parking lot and tell elaborate lies about our lives, while other people only pretend to listen. It says to the reader: yes, we're headed off a cliff, and it's all our fault, but maybe we'll still be okay if we can just keep our eyes shut.” —Sandra Newman, author of Julia
Praise for Cardinal
“I love the mind at work in these wonderfully strange stories about so-called ordinary life. They go right to the heart of how uncanny, even bizarre, ordinary life really is, if you're paying attention. This is not 'absurdist' work. It's ultra-realism. It's evidence of a new, fresh voice-intelligent, strange, deeply familiar, oddly funny, pleasantly disturbing. Add Higley's stories to my favorites.” —Brad Watson, author of Miss Jane
“Few books have captivated me like Alex Higley's collection of deft and compact stories. Unlike so much of what I read now, the brilliance of Higley's stories is subtle and implicit, utterly at the service of the heartbreaking truths about which they're built. Alex Higley is a writer with a career to watch.” —Naeem Murr, author of The Perfect Man
Praise for Old Open
“With echoes of DeLillo, Old Open is a deceptively simple novel that rebels against modern disillusionment, capturing nothing less than the texture and flux of life. Higley's subjects include the gap between information and meaning, aliens and alienation, the desire to communicate and the need to feel understood. The result is a funny, moving, and hopeful novel” —Gabe Habash, author of Stephen Florida
“Alex Higley's Old Open is an absurdist road novel, a meditation on loss, and a fractured philosophical quest. This is a compact labyrinth of a book, leading time and time again to the minotaur of Meaning.” —James Tadd Adcox, author of Does Not Love
