SOURCE: "Chile's Hour of Despair," in New Statesman & Society, Vol. 3, No. 123, October 19, 1990, p. 34.

[In the following review, Coad asserts the political setting of Curfew is a departure from the imaginary worlds typically used in Donoso's novels. Coad praises certain elements of the novel, such as the descriptions of landscapes, and faults other parts such as the psychological portraits of the main characters.]

In one sense, this is an unexpected novel from José Donoso. Normally, Donoso—justly billed on the dust-jacket as "Chile's greatest living writer"—steers well clear of allusion to actual events, preferring entirely imaginary settings for his enigmatic fables of the psychosocial pathology of the Chilean bourgeoisie. While a firm opponent of General Pinochet's recently ended dictatorship, he has always stoutly declared himself a "non-political" writer.

This time, however, not only does Donoso opt for something like realism, but he sets the novel directly amid one...