Three of Seven - Reviewing Sabotage

Happy Thursday, everyone. I don't know about you, but I've become something of a fan of Thursdays lately; they're far enough into the week for the weekend to be within view, but not so far that I have to panic about getting everything else done before it arrives. This has come in particularly handy today, as due to technical difficulties (i.e. a laptop in bad need of a complete overhaul) I was unable to write yesterday, and now I'm bound to do two of my 'challenges' in a row! So here's the first; a review of Joshua Furst's novel The Sabotage Cafe, which I read at university.

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'These things are hard to say. I'm not sure what's true and what isn't,' opens The Sabotage Cafe, 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 home still to an underground world of narcotics, anarchy, and tempestuous youth. Into this melee 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 Cheryl's experience is real, and how much is imagined by the fearful and delusional Julia, remains unclear, as Julia's disturbed mind produces illusions which are increasingly difficult to distinguish from reality.

Furst brilliantly portrays through projected emotion and internalised argument the lonely struggle of each character to find or to deny meaning in their situation. The bravado of the boys Cheryl ends up with is nothing more than a front 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 drawing sympathy, but his vivid style vividly creates the hopelessness in which his 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 to provoke.