The Curfew (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Jesse Ball

Ebook, 2011

Status

Available

Call number

813.6

Publication

Vintage (2011), 210 pages

Description

William and Molly lead a life of small pleasures, riddles at the kitchen table, and games of string and orange peels. All around them a city rages with war. When the uprising began, William's wife was taken, leaving him alone with their young daughter. They keep their heads down and try to remain unnoticed as police patrol the streets, enforcing a curfew and arresting citizens. But when an old friend seeks William out, claiming to know what happened to his wife, William must risk everything. He ventures out after dark, and young Molly is left to play, reconstructing his dangerous voyage, his past, and their future. An astounding portrait of fierce love within a world of random violence, The Curfew is a mesmerizing feat of literary imagination.… (more)

Media reviews

Jesse Ball is hardly without talent, but, for me, The Curfew is far more interesting as a window into the mechanisms behind publishing, bookselling, and the crafting of a public persona than it is as a literary text.

User reviews

LibraryThing member John_Pappas
A bit of amazing experimental fiction where the story sheds layers like a stripper in church with prose playing a role of function over flattery. Simplistic, touching and warm, it will take you two hours to read and you will be exceedingly happy and sad you did.
LibraryThing member Djupstrom
Ummm...I still am unsure what this was actually about. I think the entire book was a puppet show that was perpetrated by the old neighbors...and they are God? Pulling the strings in people's lives...literally and figuratively? um...
LibraryThing member earthforms
I might've liked this even more than Samedi the Deafness

Awards

Believer Book Award (Shortlist — 2011)

Language

Original publication date

2011
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