True Failure

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.

Publication date: February 25, 2025

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25

Page count: 280 pages

ISBN: 9781566897136

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.

Finalist for the 2025 Chicago Review of Books CHIRBy Award in Fiction

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

“Higley’s novel dramatizes the effect of . . . market logic, showing how an obsession with external success can distort the creative process itself.”

—Ben Sandman, The Nation

“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 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

“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