Status Updates From Ruído Branco

Denise and Steffie argue with Babette about chewing gum. Jack asks Heinrich about the murder he plays chess with. School has closed due to strange goings on; people speaking different languages and getting sick. One of the Mylex-suited men inspecting the problem collapsed and died. There is noise under everything.

The two girls, Jack, Babette and Wilder bump into Murray at the supermarket again. Murray speaks about how the supermarket is like a Tibetan ideal of purgatory. Denise always wears a green visor.

Steffie was holding my hand in a way I'd come to realize, over a period of time, was not meant to be gently possessive, as I'd thought at first, but reassuring.

Jack is ashamed of the fact he can’t speak German. He is taking secret lessons. He needs to learn it in time for next spring’s Hitler conference.

Thoroughly enjoying its style and sense of humor.

Jack is preoccupied with but does not speak aloud of death. He has twice now wondered who will die first? Him or Babette? He loves her very much and they spend the night reading erotic stories from adult magazines. Relatable dialogue about pleasing to please.

Reread/family readaloud

Good dialogue between Jack and Heinrich about whether it is or isn’t raining.

That night, seconds after going to sleep, I seemed to fall through myself, a shallow heart-stopping plunge. Jarred awake, I stared into the dark, realizing I'd experienced the more or less normal muscular contraction known as the myoclonic jerk.
Is this what it's like, abrupt, peremptory? Shouldn't death, I thought, be a swan dive, graceful, white-winged and smooth, leaving the surface undisturbed?

Babette has a rule where the whole family has to watch television together one night a week. The effect is to de-glamorise the medium in the children’s eyes. (This is just normal now.) The chancellor of the college thinks Jack has to grow into an extra invented initial, J. A. K. Gladney, and become bigger and uglier in order to be taken seriously as an expert in Hitler. (Lots of stuff about weight and eating.)

We meet Murray. He works for the American environments department. He and Jack (Gladney) go to a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America.

Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.
“No one sees the barn,” he said finally.

Section two was decently different from one. The tone is fascinating given the danger of the situation. Perhaps realistic. You can't always be scared. Section one helped build the couple characters to care about what they go through in section two.