SOURCE: "Purity at a Price," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4579, January 4, 1991, p. 16.

[In the following review, Wood faults Curfew for being "a discursive and rather windy novel," but credits it for providing an in-depth look at the political history of Chile.]

There is a moment which occurs again and again in José Donoso's novels, an instant of malign or obscure carnival, a scene of ruin or disguise. We can think of magical realism in this context, but only if we darken the notion, let go of its implications of whimsy and liberation. The real turns to phantasmagoria without ceasing to be real. We step suddenly into waking, historical nightmare, unfamiliar to us only because it is so close and so insistently denied.

In Curfew, for example, we are in a street in Santiago de Chile, high fences protecting large houses and gardens. A boy opens a gate...