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A review by lupetuple
Failure to Comply by Sarah Cavar
5.0
I'm extremely grateful to have received an ARC for this book, one I've been anticipating since its announcement.
This novel had a language immediately comprehensible to me even in its apparent fragmented structure. The “fragments” and “blanks,” however, lent meaning to the inexpressible, the as yet and forevermore. So many instances, it's as if the narrator is chewing the words, feeling for them in a mouth branded deviant, and spitting them out, an attempt at producing something outside of RSCH’s purview. The multiple meanings of words, of homophones, through their orthographic representation, were my favorite things to experience and devise my own worlds of.
The body as text—and then thinking of the text itself, the visual representation, brings meaning even to blank spaces. The narrator refers constantly to a “record”, and as bodies are records by themselves, so is this novel particularly in its emptiness—the emptiness containing a possibility, a hole for wholeness. The forgetting does not mean a non-existence, the absence does not mean a non-existence—but rather, things that could have been or might be, as the novel also jumps between past, present, and indicates a future. The uncertainty is compounded by the constant disorientation felt throughout the narrator’s journey.
The world-building is fluidly woven throughout the narrative without feeling intrusive—rather, the intrusion of the world itself is what is chilling, the intrusion of mechanical declarations of RSCH’s noble mission, force-fed to every subject in the Community, and difficult to disassociate oneself from. The parallels with our present world are obvious; the need to conform, to know instinctively social conventions and perform them appropriately, to be a certain size, to be sexed and gendered… here, surveillance is performed by all in the Community, an inherent duty; nevertheless, our world operates under that same notion, that deviance must be documented and shamed and thus controlled, or whisked away from the public eye.
Notions of individual responsibility, correlated with moralism, and thus the moral imperative to be “healthy”—to (a) “heal thy self”—are threaded such that there is an ever present feeling of dread and uneasiness; they are pressured to be aware of deviance, yet that very pressure causes anxiety, which is a sign of deviance. There is no way to win the game. It’s a creeping feeling.
The violence of language, how futile it is, yet harnessing that futility into power: what RSCH does best, and eventually, the narrator pieces together how useless the venture is, to bring intelligibility, “objectivity”, to bodies which will deviate regardless of an attempt to control them, as they so determine.
The very acronym RSCH is quite genius—the absence of vowels, the opening of the mouth, in protest or even simple response, makes calling into being the omnipresent entity charged with the “health” and “safety” of the Community an impossibility—a deliberate act. It is not spoken of, but always lingering in the air, as unspoken threats and warnings.
My favorite character has to be Reya—occupying a non-existence which makes them even realer. They are effectively reified through their assertion of ownership of themselves, their rejection of what is imposed upon them even as they also claim it in yet another act of defiance—their assertion of agency, of Being, against RSCH’s identification of their deviance from birth—even refusing to acknowledge RSCH at all, or try to speak it into being, because they refuse to allow it that existence. This point of contention between Reya and the narrator, who had the “choice” to deviate further and further, is brought up over and over, but their tenderness and intensity, how they connect, brings them together again and again, despite the walls, despite the barriers—and maybe because of them.
Their relationship ached and always straddled catharsis and more desperation.
The use of colors—red, blue, yellow, and finally, in the closing chapters with more prominence, the secondary color, green—and a core antagonism between them resulted in a reevaluation of concepts typically associated with each one. Red, of course, signifying life, blood, passion, and here, something to cling to, to reject the blue: calm, yet a forced calm, which can only be violent in its coercion. Blue is not a comfort, nor is it a melancholy: it is fear, compliance, the blue of water washing away the red of blood, of resistance, of the will to live. Together, they become violet, or violence, the red overtaken by the blue. Yellow was sparser, yet it demanded presence, in grotesque, in its more shocking revelation.
Bringing us to green—the unruliness of moss, of animal, where possibility and freedom lie, in states that persist relentlessly, perceived as filthy, contaminated, Unknown. The RSCH’s rejection of the animal, that which can be grown, which grows without and despite human intervention—thus green must be rejected, also. That the novel ends with this vision of green, of moss, predicts a hope for the deviant, the Mad, one we cannot know, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing—rather, there is freedom in allowing that uncertainty, that unpredictability, as it is outside of RSCH’s illusion of Truth, so contradictory because every reality cannot possibly all bend to it.
Ultimately… I’ll say that it's one of the most profound and heartrending books I’ve read in many years, one that I truly needed to read during these times where surveillance, policing, and social death are becoming more commonplace, encouraged, and “normal”, particularly when oppressed peoples around the world are demanding life and justice in the face of the vile powers behind imperialism, colonialism, racism, and all that is bound up with them. I don’t think I’ve ever read any other book that rings so true to my experiences as someone who has been forcibly hospitalized and still struggles to maintain an existence in a world so hostile and critical to beings like us. The ever present hospital, always in my vision, even as I try to live in the present—when the narrator’s tenses and point of view are straddling the thens of the hospital, of forced treatment and compliance, and the nows seemingly outside of them… that portrayal was so astoundingly genuine, to the point of terror. It was maddening, pun intended.
Failure to Comply is a book I would happily buy one thousand copies of as gifts to all the absolute strangers out there who need to sit down and read a worldmaking book—so, everyone. Obviously, highly recommended.
This novel had a language immediately comprehensible to me even in its apparent fragmented structure. The “fragments” and “blanks,” however, lent meaning to the inexpressible, the as yet and forevermore. So many instances, it's as if the narrator is chewing the words, feeling for them in a mouth branded deviant, and spitting them out, an attempt at producing something outside of RSCH’s purview. The multiple meanings of words, of homophones, through their orthographic representation, were my favorite things to experience and devise my own worlds of.
The body as text—and then thinking of the text itself, the visual representation, brings meaning even to blank spaces. The narrator refers constantly to a “record”, and as bodies are records by themselves, so is this novel particularly in its emptiness—the emptiness containing a possibility, a hole for wholeness. The forgetting does not mean a non-existence, the absence does not mean a non-existence—but rather, things that could have been or might be, as the novel also jumps between past, present, and indicates a future. The uncertainty is compounded by the constant disorientation felt throughout the narrator’s journey.
The world-building is fluidly woven throughout the narrative without feeling intrusive—rather, the intrusion of the world itself is what is chilling, the intrusion of mechanical declarations of RSCH’s noble mission, force-fed to every subject in the Community, and difficult to disassociate oneself from. The parallels with our present world are obvious; the need to conform, to know instinctively social conventions and perform them appropriately, to be a certain size, to be sexed and gendered… here, surveillance is performed by all in the Community, an inherent duty; nevertheless, our world operates under that same notion, that deviance must be documented and shamed and thus controlled, or whisked away from the public eye.
Notions of individual responsibility, correlated with moralism, and thus the moral imperative to be “healthy”—to (a) “heal thy self”—are threaded such that there is an ever present feeling of dread and uneasiness; they are pressured to be aware of deviance, yet that very pressure causes anxiety, which is a sign of deviance. There is no way to win the game. It’s a creeping feeling.
The violence of language, how futile it is, yet harnessing that futility into power: what RSCH does best, and eventually, the narrator pieces together how useless the venture is, to bring intelligibility, “objectivity”, to bodies which will deviate regardless of an attempt to control them, as they so determine.
The very acronym RSCH is quite genius—the absence of vowels, the opening of the mouth, in protest or even simple response, makes calling into being the omnipresent entity charged with the “health” and “safety” of the Community an impossibility—a deliberate act. It is not spoken of, but always lingering in the air, as unspoken threats and warnings.
My favorite character has to be Reya—occupying a non-existence which makes them even realer. They are effectively reified through their assertion of ownership of themselves, their rejection of what is imposed upon them even as they also claim it in yet another act of defiance—their assertion of agency, of Being, against RSCH’s identification of their deviance from birth—even refusing to acknowledge RSCH at all, or try to speak it into being, because they refuse to allow it that existence. This point of contention between Reya and the narrator, who had the “choice” to deviate further and further, is brought up over and over, but their tenderness and intensity, how they connect, brings them together again and again, despite the walls, despite the barriers—and maybe because of them.
Their relationship ached and always straddled catharsis and more desperation.
Spoiler
The narrator’s refusal to betray Reya, to axe them, how they refused to quit their resistance, showing the indomitable will of love even in the most disorienting and isolating conditions. How they cried for Reya, always, clung to them, brought me to tears, as well as their eventual realization of their own power, how they unabashedly let loose their deviance, contagion, onto the unsuspecting Citizen below them, and gave green its proper field.The use of colors—red, blue, yellow, and finally, in the closing chapters with more prominence, the secondary color, green—and a core antagonism between them resulted in a reevaluation of concepts typically associated with each one. Red, of course, signifying life, blood, passion, and here, something to cling to, to reject the blue: calm, yet a forced calm, which can only be violent in its coercion. Blue is not a comfort, nor is it a melancholy: it is fear, compliance, the blue of water washing away the red of blood, of resistance, of the will to live. Together, they become violet, or violence, the red overtaken by the blue. Yellow was sparser, yet it demanded presence, in grotesque, in its more shocking revelation.
Bringing us to green—the unruliness of moss, of animal, where possibility and freedom lie, in states that persist relentlessly, perceived as filthy, contaminated, Unknown. The RSCH’s rejection of the animal, that which can be grown, which grows without and despite human intervention—thus green must be rejected, also. That the novel ends with this vision of green, of moss, predicts a hope for the deviant, the Mad, one we cannot know, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing—rather, there is freedom in allowing that uncertainty, that unpredictability, as it is outside of RSCH’s illusion of Truth, so contradictory because every reality cannot possibly all bend to it.
Ultimately… I’ll say that it's one of the most profound and heartrending books I’ve read in many years, one that I truly needed to read during these times where surveillance, policing, and social death are becoming more commonplace, encouraged, and “normal”, particularly when oppressed peoples around the world are demanding life and justice in the face of the vile powers behind imperialism, colonialism, racism, and all that is bound up with them. I don’t think I’ve ever read any other book that rings so true to my experiences as someone who has been forcibly hospitalized and still struggles to maintain an existence in a world so hostile and critical to beings like us. The ever present hospital, always in my vision, even as I try to live in the present—when the narrator’s tenses and point of view are straddling the thens of the hospital, of forced treatment and compliance, and the nows seemingly outside of them… that portrayal was so astoundingly genuine, to the point of terror. It was maddening, pun intended.
Failure to Comply is a book I would happily buy one thousand copies of as gifts to all the absolute strangers out there who need to sit down and read a worldmaking book—so, everyone. Obviously, highly recommended.