The Sabotage Cafe

by: Joshua Furst

Published by: Vintage Book

Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart

In his debut novel, The Sabotage Cafe, short-story writer Joshua Furst takes will take you on one of the most intense rides I have ever experienced via the written word.

On May 24, 2004, sixteen-year-old Cheryl has had enough of her normal, suburban Minneapolis lifestyle. On a seemingly, otherwise typical day, Cheryl decides to walk away. She heads from the suburbs into the punk-rock scene of the inner city. I, a child of the Sixties who wanted to make peace and love, was unprepared for the sheer magnitude of violence, disrespect, and loathing that Cheryl encountered and that she felt about herself.

While ninety percent of the story is told in third person omniscient, readers have quite a job trying to figure out what’s going on in this electric, gritty story. The plot begins from the point of view of Julia, Cheryl’s mother: “These things are hard to say. I’m not sure what is true and what isn’t. My experiences don’t even make sense to me, so I can’t imagine that they’ll make sense to anyone else. What I can promise is that I’ll be sincere.” Ah, the unreliable narrator.

Furst is sly and provocative with his narration. Julia’s history is not a virgin idyll. Her sister Sarah was brutally murdered in 1980. She had run away from home and went underground into the hard-core punk scene. There she suffered what is teasingly referred to as an “unspeakable trauma” on the back cover, which is never completely spelled out for the reader.

However as the reader believes that an omniscient narrator is relating Cheryl’s adventure, Julia pops up often enough to remind the reader that Julia is imagining what life is like for her missing daughter. Since Julia had no way to know what is happening to her little girl, is it possible that the story being told is what happened to Julia? It’s only near the end of the masterfully written work, can you even begin to figure exactly what is happening, yet the plot line is easily followed.

The Sabotage Café looks at the downward spiral of mental illness, runaways, the homeless and the pu-rock scene. It made me gag and cry and is a work that should be read by teenagers and their parents.

Armchair Interview says: Wow! Electric and gritty–not classified as a young adult, but teens and their parents should read it