True Failure by Alex Higley

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.