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The Sabotage Café
The Sabotage Café
Aug 17, 2025 5:00 AM

Author:Joshua Furst

The Sabotage Café

As a young woman in the 1980's, Julia became entangled with the emerging punk scene in Minneapolis - in particular with the band Nobody's fool - until a mysterious and unspeakable catastrophe delivers her to a husband and the suburbs. Battered by mental llness, haunted by memories and grief that stretching back to her childhood, she is unable to put her past behind her - or refrain from making her daughter Cheryl into a vessel for her own hopes and fears.

So it comes as little surprise when 16 year-old Cheryl packs a bag and runs away. Exactly where is anyone's guess, though as Julia envisions her daughter's every move from the house through the city's outskirts and into the city - she relives her own bygone experiences in the very same place, where the radical fringe converge. Here amidst a group of would-be revolutuionaries squatting in the Sabotage Café, Cheryl re-enacts her mothers troubled coming-of-age, initiated as she is into a sullied melange of drugs, awkward sex, glib anarchy and acts of vandalism and violence that throw into question everything that she, in her mothers mind's eye, has run from and wishes to become.

A chilling, mesmerizing portrait of todays innocents burdened with the fallout of their parent's rebellion in addition to their own, The Sabotage Cafe is an unforgettable tour de force of insight and compassion, a brilliant first novel by a writer in full, ambitious command of his craft.

Reviews

Praise for The Sabotage Cafe
'Skillfully and ingeniously written, this gripping account presents the devastating effect of a mother's instability on her child . . . Highly recommended.'

—— Library Journal

Joshua Furst's The Sabotage Café renders beautifully-through both its observational intelligence and the shrewd deployment of a quietly radical and flexible point of view-the obsessive neediness of a mother whose own past screwups make her all the more terrified for her daughter. As it does, it provides a harrowing account of the way, for better and very much for worse, we cling to the notion that we live inside our children and they live inside us.

—— Jim Shepard

Flawless eloquence... The reader cares immensely how it ends... Remarkable. No reader of fiction, whether a fan of punk music or not, should miss it

—— Washington Times

this is a taut, mesmerising debut

—— The Herald

This witty comedy of manners is a thoroughly entertaining read ... extremely observant and insightful

—— No. 1 Magazine

A comical look at the trials and tribulations of modern marriage

—— Daily Express

Fiona Neill's comic novel is an investigation into modern marriage...Neill's characters are so cleverly depicted, you feel as if you've met at least one of them before

—— Vogue

Margaret Forster's professional skills and accomplishment are to the fore, as usual

—— Paul Bailey , Independent

A compelling portrait of family life

—— Big Issue North

In a classic Forster novel about class and generational upheaval, here the author writes tenderly about the influence of grandmothers and their desire, as Sand put it, to "stuff" their grandchildren "with happiness"

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent

Captivating... Like a beloved granny's visit, we're a little bit sorry to see the end approaching

—— Irish Times

This rich novel, full of pathos, concerns the unbridgeable gaps between generations

—— Daily Telegraph

Deft new novel... Tremain is such an assured and measured writer

—— Sebastian Sme , Spectator

Tremain expertly maintains the suspense. As one would expect from so gifted a storyteller...much more is on offer than the pleasures of detection

—— Pamela Norris , Literary Review

A novel in which humour, pathos and suspense are sewn together with practised skill

—— Edmund Gordon , Times Literary Supplement

Sinister, shocking and extremely powerful

—— Woman & Home

Wonderful

—— Red

Her writing is always thrilling and this is much more than simply a page-turner

—— Jane Wheatley , The Times

A successful novel, well made and written with a light touch

—— Alex Clark , The Guardian

It is beautifully written, and elegantly edited, and manages to pack in vivid characterisations built on tragic family histories... With its strong structure and interesting themes, it could be a textbook example of how to write a modern novel

—— Third Way

Satisfying death-blow to place-in-the-sun escapism

—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent Summer Reads

A compelling novel

—— Tatler

A wry family black comedy, a study in revenge, and an unlikely, if sinister, thriller...a characteristically intelligent, well constructed narrative... The prose is precise and fluent, the tone is neutral, and Tremain makes effective use of the fact that many adults remain children

—— Eileen Battersby , The Irish Times

A criss-crossing, sinuous tale of muted passion and sibling rivarly - and affection - set in the Cevennes. Its peculiar, particular atmosphere is conjured perfectly

—— Erica Wagner , The Times, Christmas round up

A haunting and perfectly poised tale of incest and antiques.

—— Frances Wilson , Daily Telegraph, Christmas round up

Creepily affecting

—— Katy Guest , Independent on Sunday, Christmas round up

Chilling and vivid

—— Charlotte Vowden , Daily Express

Surely one of the most versatile novelists writing today... The scene-setting opening is languorous and beautiful, giving full rein to Tremain's descriptive gifts... A disturbing tale and one rich in detail

—— Daily Express

Intriguing

—— James Urquhart , Financial Times

Tremain expertly heightens the tension in a cleverly fashioned and astutely observed novel that reads like a cross between Ruth Rendell and Jean de Florette

—— Simon Shaw , Mail on Sunday

Tremain's extraordinary imagination has produced a powerful, unsettling novel in which two worlds and cultures collide

—— Cath Kidson Magazine

Tremain writes about this part of France so well because she has known it since childhood, and she captures a sensuality in the landscape that is both attractive and eerie... It is an enthralling book about the catastrophic disruption honesty can bring

—— Siobhan Kane , Irish Times

The novel has all the formal structure of a medieval morality tale, along with its traditional dichotomies: rus and urbe, avarice and asceticism, chastity and lust

—— Guardian

Rose Tremain's thrilling Trespass is set in an obsure valley in Southern France... To be read slowly; Tremain's writing is too exquisite to hurry

—— The Times

Timeless but rooted; tangible but otherworldly. Meticulously plotted, with the musty sadness that comes of cleaving to the past, Trespass will reward your reading time

—— Scotland on Sunday

Rose Tremain's novel begins with a scream and barely loosens its grip amid the sumptuously written pages that follow...subtly harnesses the stifling heat and dangerously feral landscape of southern France to unspool a psychologically disconcerting story of family skeletons and outsider tensions

—— Metro

Like a sinister edition of A Place In the Sun directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with the depth and subtlety that make the book far more than a mere thriller

—— You Magazine (Daily Mail)
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