a bit. When she finds him stashing something in the floorboards one day, she calls Mr. Thabane to take John away. The next morning the police come to her house asking about John. She says that everything is fine, but John is afraid. Promising not to let anything hurt him, she tries to comfort him. In a cruel trick, an officer distracts Mrs. Curren and the others shoot John. The cops then say she can return to her home, but she can't stand the thought of it. She wanders the streets until she falls asleep under a bridge. Waking to kids groping her, she's robbed and in excruciating pain. Somehow Vercueil finds her, but she still refuses to go home. They fall asleep in the woods together before returning the next day. Her house has been trashed, and a policeman is there who interrogates her about John and Vercueil. After he leaves, she calls Mr. Thabane to warn him. From this point on, Mrs. Curren fades quickly as the cancer progresses. Her pain gets worse, and she has bizarre nightmares. Vercueil, who is caring for her now, repeatedly encourages her to commit suicide. They start sharing a bed so that she can stay warm. Their relationship is completely platonic; she just can't stay warm any more. When she wakes up extremely cold one day, she asks Vercueil if today is the day. Without a word, he climbs into bed and embraces her. Her final words are that he can't make her any warmer. Structure and genre Mrs Curren is the first-person narrator in an epistolary style. Since she addresses her daughter in her letters as "you" the reader feels directly addressed. Coetzee's novel can be interpreted as a coming-of-age novel since it is about Mrs Curren's perspective on the world and coming to terms with that. Therefore, coming-of-age is in this case not growing older but rather about development. The title is not about the Iron Age but iron represents the rough and brutal way of life Mrs Curren and the people in Cape Town live in. The first part where the term Age of Iron comes up is: Mrs Curren does indeed think that the brutality is not something a handful of people partakes in but is a very big part in the nature of the people in Cape Town. However, she does underline that just like every other