Word: curfew
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...Curfew...
PUBLISHED nearly 15 years after the Chilean coup that replaced Salvador Allende's democratically elected government with a military regime, Jose Donoso's Curfew explores the harsh realities that comprise life for the millions of citizens surviving under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. A grim portrait of terror, machine guns, armored trucks and unresolved murders, Curfew presents the life of those protesting the Pinochet government, and criticizes not only the mechanisms of the government but also the solutions of the Left...
...with a series of careful character sketches, a rapidly moving plot, and detailed scene descriptions that Donoso's novel moves, sometimes tortorously and awkwardly, as if trying to imitate the horrific lives of the people it portrays. Within Curfew's chapters of machine guns and blood, moreover, Donoso's novel proves that even in an area where police stand on every street corner and seem planted for protection, it is unclear who is the object of their guard. In Donoso's Chile nothing is sacred, no one is safe, and even love perishes in the face of political complications...
...Curfew's plot centers on the wake and funeral of Matilde Neruda, widow of the Nobel Laurate Pablo Neruda, who was also a well known communist and recipient of the Stalin Prize. During the course of the wake, a debate ensues as to whether the widow's last wishes should be granted...
...Curfew's action also revolves around the character of Manungo Vera, an ex-patriate hippi rock star who has returned from France in time for the widow's funeral. Once a member of that Leftist clique that so desperately wants to stage the funeral as if it were a communist demonstration, Vera has spent time in France enjoying fame, fortune, and a respite from the horrors of current Chilean life. Accompanied by his thoroughly French son, Jean-Paul, Manungo revives his ambiguities concerning Chilean politics and the Left, becoming ensnared in the political longings that, according to Donoso, inevitably catch...