Curfew: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A story of a hectic 24 hours late in Pinochet's dictatorship
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book which is set late in Pinochet's dictatorship as democracy was just starting to return to Chile. An exiled pop singer, who has been in Europe so long he is nearly European, returns on a whim bringing his son, a six-year-old who speaks only French. He arrives just in time to learn that his old friend "La Chascona," widow of poet Pablo Neruda, has died. The next 24 hours find him at the wake, hiding in the streets during the curfew all night with his former lover, who has been in the underground all these years, and finally at a climactic scene during the huge funeral. During it all he tries to come back into touch with his origins as a poor boy in the remote, mystical, and unsophisticated island of Chiloe in the south. The action in the book, despite many flashbacks, covers just about 24 hours. The book is very skillfully written and translated and brings the contradictions and conflicts of life in modern Chile a little closer to those of us in the rest of the world.