Sunday Salon ~ two books and a movie

Sparrow Migrations ~ by Cari Noga, 2013, fiction, 8/10

"...Robby's tribute.  Later, the chaplain would tell Robby it felt more sacred than any prayer she could recall" (p. 319).

The Orphan Daughter ~ by Cari Noga, 2018, fiction (Michigan), 9.5/10

"Until now, I never thought anything could be worse than a mother losing a child.  There is, and Lucy knows it:  a child losing her mother" (p. 221).

I read Cari Noga's two novels back to back, finishing one in August and the other in September.  The first included an autistic boy who got interested in birds and their habits and bird calls.  I liked the second book better, as you can see by my ratings, but I didn't like having so much Spanish thrown in without telling us what the words or phrases meant.  Usually I could guess by context, and the author did often have another character respond with words that let me figure out what must have been said.  But not always.  Someone who commented on Amazon felt the same way ― frustrated by the abundance of Spanish words unexplained.  Otherwise, the book would have been a ten.

Movie

I don't often watch movies, preferring to read the many, many, many unread books on my shelves and on my Kindle.  Yesterday I saw "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" with some of my friends.  It's about a grieving mother trying to get justice for her daughter in a small town, years after her daughter's death.  To get attention, she pays for three billboards:

RAPED WHILE DYING
AND STILL NO ARRESTS?
HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?

One friend got up and left in the middle, saying, "Too violent for me!"  Never have I seen so much violence in a movie or heard so much profanity.  It seemed that EVERY sentence was laced with words that used to be banned in movies and television.  And for no good reason, that I could fathom.  I'm glad I saw the movie, and I'll probably be thinking about it for a very long time, but was all that profanity and violence necessary?  And what a strange way for the movie to end!  No, I'm not telling you how it ended, and NOT because I want you to see it for yourself.  It was just strange.  Who thinks like that?

Someone wondered if it's based on a true story, but this article says it is not.  The movie does show the anger and frustrations of being a woman ignored by men.  It also shows racism's ugly face.  Click on the movie title above for more about the movie and to view the trailer.

Bloggers gather in the Sunday Salon — at separate computers in different time zones — to talk about our lives and our reading.