The Curfew
by Jesse Ball
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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. show more 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. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
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.
Quite enjoyed the allegory and thought experiment. Keeping to reread in different circumstances.
I went back to the Chautauqua 2112 reading list for The Curfew. The author, Jesse Ball will be speaking at Chautauqua while we're there this summer. The book is about a man and his mute daughter living in a grim police state where, for example, music is banned and citizens are required to work seven days per week. The police are all under-cover so you never know when you're being watched. It's a short but very powerful book.
Well that was depressing
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...
I might've liked this even more than Samedi the Deafness
Ratings
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Published Reviews
ThingScore 25
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.
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Author Information
23+ Works 2,404 Members
Jesse Ball was born in Port Jefferson, New York on June 7, 1978. He received a bachelor's degree from Vassar College and an MFA from Columbia University. His novels include Samedi the Deafness, Silence Once Begun, A Cure for Suicide, and How to Set a Fire and Why. His poem, Speech in a Chamber, was chosen for the anthology The Best American Poetry show more 2006. He won the 2008 Paris Review Plimpton Prize for The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp, and Carr. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Curfew
- Original publication date
- 2011
- People/Characters
- William Drysdale; Molly Drysdale; Mrs. Monroe; Oscar; Mr. Epstein; Mrs. Epstein (show all 14); Mr. Denton; Gerard; Dora Lansher; Stan Milgram; Mercer; Mrs. Gibbons; Siegfried Gibbons; James Goldman
- Important places
- C.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 193
- Popularity
- 169,762
- Reviews
- 6
- Rating
- (3.71)
- Languages
- English, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 1
