Failure to Comply

by Sarah Cavar

Every story has its fugitives. I, a deviant self-hacker with three arms, two stomachs, and no name, is on the run from RSCH, an high-tech, authoritarian government that mandates wellness and carves the contours of truth itself. When I is kidnapped at axe-point to be mined for forbidden memories, they must struggle against RSCH’s medical abuse to recapture their history, reunite with their lover, and rewrite their future –– or risk remaining Patient forever.

I crosses an epistolary, time-flipped dreamscape as they recollect their memories from RSCH’s hungry archive, and, in the process, write the story of their liberation.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Weird Fiction, Disability, Dystopia

285 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2024

About the author

Cavar [sarah] (they/them) is the author of FAILURE TO COMPLY (featherproof books, 2024) and DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS (Northwestern University Press, 2026).

Cavar holds a PhD in Cultural Studies and Science & Technology Studies at the University of California: Davis, and holds a B.A. in Critical Social Thought from Mount Holyoke College. They teach at the University of Maine: Augusta, and are interested in the politics of queercrip / transMad knowledge production.

Reviews

[Briar Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Cavar’s Failure to Comply, I couldn’t help but think of the recent David Cronenberg movie Crimes of the Future. Both deal with dystopias in which bodies and their modification are strictly regulated, and people with unauthorized bodies form a vibrant, perpetually imperiled subculture on the margins. Both use this conceit to speak metaphorically about the plights of trans and disabled people, although Failure to Comply’s characters are also presented as literally, textually disabled and trans. But, although Crimes of the Future is often accused of being a “weird movie,” Failure to Comply is undeniably much, much weirder. Cronenberg is super normal compared to this.
       A major theme of this novel is language as a shaper of possibility: the ways in which the words someone has learned to use to think about something can dictate their perception of that thing and the limits of what they believe that thing is able to do or be. To this end, Cavar invents eir own conventions of vocabulary, grammar, and tense, and often resorts to devices like staggered text, repeated text, font shifts, and large swathes of white space to indicate when the narrator is having difficulty thinking, having their rebellious thoughts intruded upon by conditioning from the tyrannical RSCH, or unable to conceive of something in words at all. Along with Failure’s frequent narrative dislocations, which blur the narrator’s memories, the narrator’s fantasies, hypothetical alternate (?) pasts and futures, the story’s “factual present,” and more, this makes it a challenging book to read at times. It demands a reader’s careful attention, and it demands the sort of understanding and interpretive lens that is more commonly asked of us by poetry. (Fitting, as Cavar has been writing and publishing poetry for years.)
          Failure to Comply rewards this attention with a deft, intelligent sense of humor and wordplay, acerbic Kafkaesque (or maybe Gilliamesque?) satire, and uncompromisingly radical politics around mind/body autonomy and liberation. There were insights here that startled me! And the central romance is a compelling, honest depiction of t4t disabled love and connection, including betrayal, resentment, anger, and causing harm to one another at times. Above all, what a joy to read a work of fiction— something that could be called a sci-fi novel, no less— that positively revels in the fact it’s made of words, of written language. That knows how to use that fact to trick and destabilize the reader like a magician, instead of just (or, often, at all) trying to convey vivid mental images of the various characters and scenes. That’s an exceedingly rare quality these days, and it’s always been rare to see it done ostentatiously yet well.
       Apart from Crimes of the Future, I would strongly recommend Failure to Comply for people who liked mid-2010s indie games along the lines of Porpentine's twines (With Those We Love Alive, etc.), We Know the Devil, and Heaven Will Be Mine.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dystopia about the normalization and control of the body and the unpersoning of anybody who falls outside the "correct" parameters, showcasing oppressive government control and a subculture outside of it. I found the inclusion of "axes" fascinating, people who aren't citizens but can become citizens of a secondary class of people (who are still treated badly and clearly labelled as class II citizens, but at least they are citizens now!) by axing other defiants and earning their citizenship through blood and especially the fact that a society that claims to abhor violence to see who is tasked with carrying it out and where ("outside their pur(e)view"). I also was very intrigued by the many "corrupt" bodies and minds the book included (the eating disordered, the fat, the trans, the disabled, the Deaf, the mad, the self-harming, the queer, the inter body), which are all bodies targeted by the government's focus on purity and health (as they were and are in our society). I also liked the acknowledgement that society's fatphobia and discrimination against fat people is a factor in many eating disorders (not the only one, but certainly part of many), while society (current and the dystopian one in the novel) like to pretend that eating disorders are a purely personal failing without acknowledging the way society's fatphobia influences and forms them. What I found fascinating also was the many bodies that were inherently excised from the population (the visibly disabled body that cannot hide their disability, the intersex body, those that cannot stomach the food regime due to allergies or other digestive issues). Any body that cannot be fixed to fit the norm was disappeared. And while the exclusion of non-white people is not explicitly stated, there are quite a few hints (emphasis of the palebright skin that allows people to become dr, RSCH, or police, "long dead englishes", the fact that the only (afaik) darker skins that are mentioned is in a pile of corpses), and so even the non-white body has become excluded in this society. The parallel of whiteness and purity (a white wall against ungoverned thoughts, white clothes for drs., white streets and houses) is also constantly reinforced.
There's also a disabled t4t romance that doesn't shy away from showing the ways in which even those relationships can cause harm, but can also be lifesaving love and connection.
The plot itself meanders, gets lost in time and memory, skips like a scratched record and gives small memory flashes as insights to the past. The only true constant we have is the main character I and so we follow I through their journey, with flashbacks to memories, more recent past, hypothetical pasts and futures and the "factual" present. The story is challenging to read, but fascinating and if you've ever wanted to see a book do incredibly interesting things with language and genre, please check this out!
My absolutely favorite part of this novel was the writing style, making use of blank space, different fonts, the inclusion of poetry, word play such as "It was where I first learned to shrug off my parole. (p)erforming (a) (role)", "I ow(n)ed myself", "outside their pur(e)view". Grammar, vocabulary and language in general is portrayed as a shaper (word makes world) and so it is disrupted, reorganized and reclaimed.

Absolutely recommended to anybody who wants more trans, Mad and disabled liberation, if you enjoy the writing style of Charity Heartscape Porpentine and House of Leaves, if you're a true Matrix-Head or want to see something interesting done to linguistics.

tw: oppressive government, control and coercion, ableism, transphobia, eating disorders, fatphobia, interphobia, institutionalization, medical abuse, force feeding, self-harm (probably more that I missed. It's an intense story)

[I. Merey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a dream, full of urgency, suffocation, anxiousness and wake up—gaps in memory and blank areas of what translates to literal brain fog; free (and incarcerated) association.

FAILURE TO COMPLY examines a society where HEALTH has become the highest objective of its citizens and we follow two renegades, who pariah themselves indefinitely by refuting this objective—this would already be enough to draw me in—but what I really enjoyed was the use of language to mirror that something unexpected, unconventional, noncompliant (to our rules of expectation; rules of how words work at all) is its own whole expression and mode of painting a different kind of picture.

FAILURE is not guided by clear arcs: The narrator weaves in and out of lucidity and timelines and tenses and I found trying to make sense worked less than simply letting myself up to the nonrules of the dream. (Nightmare?) But even in disorder, a pattern emerged between an existence in which one is one sickest, freest, truest self, and another, where one has lost all modicum of individuality-agency to stay in the sterile ‘purity’ of Wellness. Suspicious and forever on the look-out for any sign of ‘deviance’ (in others, and most of all, in one’s self!)

Cavar’s words explore what happens when we cut ties with such social and mental jesses: Always poetic, sometimes prophetic, weird and also relevant as a commentary on the idea that there is some intrinsic, inescapable TRUTH about our identities locked into the configuration of our flesh that we can never escape from. And so, any distortion of this flesh becomes some questionable attempt to twist ‘reality’, deserving surveillance.

I had many highlighted lines, but just a few favorites:

“Chance was still a wrench. It begged the question: could a body be salvageable when it had not yet had time to choose deviance but instead was simply cursed with it? How was it that deviance was both an unchanging biological truth and a pathogen to be excommunicated?”

“All of us looked around, panicked, waiting for someone to tell us whether or not we were supposed to look. A look away was a refusal to see reality, to see guilt. But looking too intently suggested illegitimate interest in and even desire for the body. Some place must exist in between those two, but it seemed that the location of that safe middle-ground was ever-shifting.

And the innocuous, but chilling:

“I hope he decides to get better.”

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book sounded wild and requested a review copy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mid way check in: this book is breaking my brain.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Honestly, I am not sure what I just read. I believe this is taking place in a near-future post eco-collapse environment where a government agency referred to as RSCH took advantage of the chaos and began instituting extreme new social, educational, and gender rules and norms for its Citizens. Individuals are fitted with permanent AR contacts that record and upload memories directly to RSCHs infrastructure and are used as a means to monitor conformity. Any deviation to the social or dietary regimens is met with strict retraining, amputations slash body modifications, or axeing (which I think is a form of kidnapping) in the hopes of rehabilitating the person. Though, depending on the level of deviance, I think some people are just disappeared.

It's written in a highly experimental format that plays with language and structure A LOT. Part fragmented novel, part poetry, part found footage/transcripts/government postings, it was really difficult to follow. I mean, Cavar makes you WORK for it, you guys. And I don't even know if I got it. I could be really far off base here. My head was literally SPINNING throughout the entire thing.

Early reviews are all glowing, so this could totally be a me-not-you thing, but as someone who tends to dig experimental fiction, I'd be really surprised if I'm the only one who will struggle with this.

Pick this one up if you have an appreciation for sci fi authoritarian dystopia with trans and disability representation. For a vibe check, if you like the concepts in Darin Bradley's Dystopian Cluster series (Chimpanzee, Totem, and Noise), or the writing style of Blake Butler, this may also be for you too.

If you do end up checking it out, I'd love to know what you think!

[Dale Stromberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel depicts a post-nature dystopia in which humans live within a totalitarianism of hygiene, a society in which the authoritarian RSCH holds an absolute monopoly on truth, on perception, on what a human body must be. Selfhood itself is a pathology, a disease vector threatening society, and it must be eradicated in pursuit of total purity: “As time ran, things became more illegal, because things became more perfect.” The only possible act of resistance is to make oneself intentionally unwell, to become bodily deviant. Failure to Comply is challenging, both because its nightmarish hegemonocosm is disturbing to inhabit and because, reflecting the narrator’s own disorientation within this world, their language can be disorientating: blanks in the text signal repressed or unbearable thoughts, while broken or scrambled syntax evince a psychological block or an episode of overload. I have not read anything else remotely like this in 2024.

Editing to add a gift link to a longer review I’ve posted to Medium: It’s right here.

[Ripley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it, but I also didn't? I struggled--a lot. This book is an experimental hodgepodge of poetry, prose, and transcripts. It plays with language and the absence of language, or more aptly put, the erasure of language. Past and future melt together with the present, making time anything but a vague awareness. This book is a sci-fi hellscape in which the governing body owns everyone, controls everything, and sorts them into two boxes: male and female. Everything naturally occurring has been deemed unnatural and 'deviant' unless approved and made so by the governing body.

"The most powerful thing about RSCH [the governing body] is its words. The worlds it deals. Deviant, irresponsible, dangerous—handing them to us like the old pharmacist would with pills."

In a time of anti-trans legislation, stories like these have become all the more critical because, more than anything, this is a story about resistance and holding onto one's identity. This book requires concentration and will not be suited to everyone's tastes, but if you enjoy experimental literature, give it a try.

[Lor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cavar has created a world so thick with doublespeak and stifling, constant surveillance that escape seems impossible---and then gives us a weed among the pavement, hopeful and desperate, to live and discover what selfdom is.

[Arnold T · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow - best book I have read this year

[Venneh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book I’m likely going to be throwing at people for a while. You have a teenager starting to figure out that they exist outside of the black and white binary of a nightmare health corporation as all encompassing data nightmare, plus torture and cyberpunk existence, and finding out how to exist outside of a life that’s been deeply regimented. Deeply sensory prose and really well structured in that you deliberately notice the absences and holes and what’s waiting on the edges of your vision.

[Victoria Gettinger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Trying too hard to be unique & edgy, some of it works, most is just weird. The plot behind the experimental writing is awesome, but it’s too obscured.

[Jade (Plot Twist Lollipops) · Rating 5 out of 5]

★ 5/5

Unsure if I can sum up how much I loved this book better than anyone else has already done. Failure to Comply is many things. A cry for autonomy that is heard, yet still goes unanswered. A plea for ipseity that is denied relentlessly. A nonlinear trans-romance poem. The book’s stylistic choices—its use of white space, shifting fonts, embedded poetry, and playful word manipulation like “It was where I first learned to shrug off my parole. (p)erforming (a) (role),” “I ow(n)ed myself,” and “outside their pur(e)view”—all highlight how grammar, vocabulary, and language function as forces that shape reality. Because of this, language itself is unsettled, rearranged, and ultimately reclaimed throughout the work.

The narrator 'I' is a pariah and a fugitive with three arms, two stomachs, and no name. They drift in and out of clarity, switching timelines and tenses with the lucidity of a nightmare. So if you are trying to make perfect sense of it, you're missing the point. In all the chaos, there is a point to be made: one version of life where you’re at your sickest but also your freest and most authentic, and another where you give up every bit of individuality and agency to fit into the idea of "Wellness" (aka medical abuse of the trans and disabled people). Selfdom is a contagion running rampant through society and must be eradicated at all costs. When 'I' gets kidnapped at axe-point so their forbidden memories can be harvested, they’re forced to fight against RSCH’s tyranny to get their past back, reconnect with their partner, and take control of their future.

Radical, liberating, and rewarding speculative art.

[Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I made this account for the sole purpose of reviewing this book.

I preordered it and got my copy last week. Finished it in about a day in a half; I couldn't put it down. Failure to Comply is a strange and compelling story, from the setting, to the plot, to the style of writing.

I found it to be a bit more difficult of a read, but only because the text itself was so engaging. Cavar does a fantastic job writing from the perspective of someone desperate to share their story who is skirting around the limits imposed on their thoughts, memories, and words they use.

As a disabled trans person, the constant theme of surveillance and health as a moral social imperative, how dominant structures define what health even is and weaponize it, the ways in which people are unpersoned and dehumanized and the violence against them rendered invisible, and so much more really resonated with me. Cavar did a fantastic job exploring these themes and concepts in ways that are thoughtful and engaging.

The style of the writing itself, with words erased, blackout poetry, boldtext, the use of words that sound the same and repetition to change the meanings of what was being said...it really expanded my view of what a novel can be.

Failure to Comply is a book I'll surely be thinking about for a long time, and will almost certainly come back to. I look forward to seeing what Cavar comes up with next!

[Sadifura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an incredible undertaking. I want to show my praise first:

This was an incredible book written in an equally incredible style. This book was written with a style that compelled me to finish to the end, a rarity for a lot of books these days. Furthermore, it's observance of the psychiatric system as a controlling dystopia that eliminates difference is one that has merit.

However;

I have critiques on the story's fairly latent, perhaps author-unaware fatphobia, especially as a fat Mad person.

The descriptions of the nameless main character's fatness post RSCH as a disgusting, horrific, inherently bulbous and deformed, but not in a good way, thing, as opposed to their idyllic deformity when they were thin in the woods, made me feel frankly disgusted in myself. The glorification of their starvation as rebellion, while fatness and "overfeeding" seems to be considered an overreliance on psychiatry, also made me feel wrong about myself and it was a fairly disgusting implication about those who had become fat on their own to not conform to society's expectations.

Don't get me wrong, this was a good book, but the latent fatphobia made me feel. Bad.

4.5/5

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Failure to Comply is a narrative told from the outskirts of a fascist society in which the ruling organization outlaws any and all abnormality and encourages those "lesser" deviants to assist in the suppression and correction of those deemed too far gone; a fun-house mirror reflection of the oppressive social structures of the present day. Far from the only societal commentary present, this is also a critique of institutions such as psychiatry, the punitive justice system, and divisive propaganda. The layout of the text and the meandering plot is reminiscent of the dissociative thought patterns present in those who have experienced extreme abuse, which I find to be a compelling storytelling device, though difficult to follow at times. Highly recommend to anyone interested in themes of queer and transsexual liberation, disabled and mad pride, and "weird" fiction.

[c.s. inez. · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Review of Advance Reading Copy, made possibly by Featherproof Books) - I don't even really have the right words to talk about the way it felt to read this book. Which I guess is a little ironic. Failure to comply is a really fantastic work of science fiction that is frustrating to read and hard to understand at times but the payoff is so worth it. Cavar has such a clear voice even in this story where language is so heavily controlled. On a more personal note to the book, it was really amazing to read such a blatantly queer science fiction story. So often it feels as if we are forgotten about in the future and invisible in dystopia and utopia alike. I might have to come back and edit this after I have had more time to think about it. I loved it, I simply can't find the words.

[Snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not a goodreads user but follow cav on tumblr. I made an account to review their book, which is my favorite of the year so far. They write honestly about fascism, dystopia, and being queer in ways language can't describe, and I found this book very caring and even tender despite also being very violent and sometimes triggering. (There are trigger warnings listed on the Storygraph listing). All of the choices in this book were carefully thought-out, even the ones that didn't make much sense at first. Idk I'm a bad reviewer but this book was really good, maybe I'll come back with more details later. I'm glad I found Failure to Comply.

[Kasey P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

another person here who knows cav from "online" and made an account just to review this book. I consider myself a lifelong scifi fan and this is fresh and exciting but also takes inspiration from folks like samuel r delany, another fav author for me. I think people who like narrative games and visual novels, e.g. porpentine, will be interested in this. I've gottena lot of great book recs from cav and am excited about this and their other books.

tw: body horror, EDs, self harm, medical harm,

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was incredibly difficult to read / understand. The “story”(?) is very good and seems to be a portal into the author’s struggle with life. At times I really liked the writing and at times it made the book difficult to follow. I find it wrong to say I disliked it, so instead I’ll say I didn’t fully understand it. There is a lot of potential and possibility here worth exploring.

[Alix Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Foucault but make it (explicitly) trans. This isn't a novel where you sit back and enjoy the ride, instead the experimental and non-narrative form pushes you to attend to the interstices, even when you might want to look away. This book challenged me in all the right ways.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous were the two novels by poets I read this year. I liked this one better because it leaned into its weirdness, but there were some parts I didn't quite "get." Three stars with a fourth for originality.

[stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

so lovingly and meticulously crafted. i'll say that this being an "experimental" form requires a little more physical effort on the reader's end -- this is a book that needs your attention -- but it's worth the work.

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

WTF did I just read? I couldn't follow anything, the story didn't flow, the changes from story to poetry were jagged and made no sense. I'm really tryjng hard to figure out the 5 star reviews but to each their own. This was downright terrible.

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my book!

[Vivs =) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I know cav through following them on Tumblr.

This is one of my new all time favorite books and got me back into surrealism in lit!

[Kalyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think experimental prose just isn't my thing.

[Nathan Bodnar · Rating 2 out of 5]

huh?

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really appreciated and admired what this was aiming at - a modern 1984? - and the experimental techniques with language and story were effective. Maybe this was my failure, but I felt like it could have been an amazing short story, or novella even. As a whole book, I struggled to finish.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gripping and deeply personal read. Failure to Comply will turn your words upside down, and turn your ideas about truth and knowledge inside out. There is fear, joy, struggle, all woven throughout the mundane horrors of a life between the lines of the system. Whether or not you think this book contains something relatable to you, it will change the way you think about language, structure, story, and maybe even yourself. Don't wait for the axe.

[L.N. Holmes]

This is a Small Spec Book Awards nominee!