Oxford's oldest student newspaper

Independent since 1920

Review: The Sabotage Café

"These things are hard to say. I’m not sure what’s true and what isn’t."

 

This is the opening of The Sabotage Café, Joshua Furst’s tale of a dysfunctional family relationship born of painful memories and mental illness. Welcome to Dinkytown, Minneapolis, scene of the 1980s punk rebellion from which Julia has escaped, and still home to an underground world of narcotics, anarchy and tempestuous youth.

Into this meleé runs Cheryl, Julia’s 16-year-old daughter, escaping the confines of suburbia and her mother’s oppressive presence. As we are drawn into Cheryl’s world of drugs, sex and squalor mixed with hashed-up ideals about the demise of ‘the establishment’, we also journey into Julia’s past, picking up the pieces of a life diverted and damaged. How much of her experience is real, and how much is imagined by the fearful and delusional Julia remains unclear, as Julia’s disturbed mind produces illusions which become increasingly difficult to distinguish from flashback and reality.

What Furst does brilliantly is portray through projected emotion and internalised argument the lonely struggle of each character to find meaning in their situation, or to deny it. The gung-ho bravado of the boys Cheryl ends up with is nothing more than a face for their insecurities, the outcome of youth burdened by their parents’ blunders as well as their own.

Furst’s blunt and epithetic manner  shocks rather than draws sympathy at first, but his open style creates the sense of hopelessness in which the book’s characters dwell, empty and needy, clawing into each other’s lives as if some solace can be found by living vicariously. His compassionate exploration of life in the grimy fallout of a failed revolution and the desire to obliterate the self is a first novel to be proud of, and one that provokes.

Check out our other content

Most Popular Articles