A book that traces the history of a little diatonic button accordion through the people that used it. I enjoyed "The Shipping News," and thought that this might be a clever story. I was more than a little disappointed. This depressing little history had a lot of squalor, a lot of grime--and through it all, the urge to make music...NOPE. More like if there is a little kid in the vignette, he/she is going to be either neglected, physically abused or sexually molested.

This book is outrageously entertaining, each paragraph is an incredible short story in itself. Each sentence is packed with interesting anecdotes and outlandish descriptions. Annie Proulx created characters that continue to swim around in my imagination. This book follows the existence of a green acccordion hand-made with great care in the late 1800's in Italy as it crosses the ocean and passes through different hands, different eras and into the modern age. Because Annie Proulx is a historian w More...

It's hard for me to say enough about Proulx. In this book, she follows an accordion as it changes hands and moves around the world. She tells the stories of the people who play it. The accordion as a "silent" narrator.

Again, the story is quintessentially American as it traces the immigrant journey Stateside...just the description of the accordion itself, in the beginning pages is enough for me to recommend the book.

I know that Proulx is shy, retiring, even reclusive (my favorite writers, her, Sa More...

Very disappointing. This book's main character is the accordian whose whereabouts the novel follows through magical and strange circumstances. The character development was lacking and the story was hard to follow. One of those books one has to force oneself to finish.

Longwinded and preoccupied with history. In other short stories and books Proulx proved herself a master at casting a compelling story before a meaningful historical backdrop. To me, when history takes precedence over story the writing suffers. That's what happens here. Proulx doesn't seem to care about her characters so much as the ambitious task she has set before her, which is to follow the peripatetic path of a simple green organetto for a hundred years.

Some of her plot twists are interesti More...

Two stars for Proulx's coherent and interesting writing style. No extra stars for wasting my time on a pointless book.

Halfway through this book I knew it was going to be a chore to finish. When I finally did, I felt a great burden lift off my shoulders. I am free to read better books!

This is basically a collection of short stories focused on generally nasty people who live in America throughout the years and happen to play the (various kinds of) accordion. Apparently there are a lot of accordion More...

Proulx proves beyond a shadow of a doubt (whatever that means) that a best-selling novel can be bereft of plot, transformative characters, evocative prose, stimulating dialogue, and other common literary elements that would normally serve to keep the reader engaged and stop them from either killing themselves or using the book as kindling. In fact, Accordian Crimes is physical evidence that a book can be composed entirely of comma separated lists and people will still read it if enough self-appo More...

I can't remember the last time it took me so long to get through a book. I kept thinking that it would get easier as I read on, but it wasn't until around pg. 350 (out of about 475) that I actually became mildly interested. I'd never read any Annie Proulx and the description of the book intrigued me, but it was nothing like I expected. I was hoping for more of a story ABOUT the accordeon, I guess, but it was really how the accordeon ended up in the hands of random people that you never had any i More...

Annie Proulx has written an odd and compelling book, ostensibly about the fate of those who in one way or another have come into possession of a green accordion, made in Sicily towards the end of the 19th century. It passes from one person to another over a hundred years, seeming to bring bad luck on all who own it. In this narrative, however, Proulx has woven together two histories� that of various ethnic minorities in the US over the last hundred years and an account of accordion music in thos More...

It was a difficult choice between 3 or 4 stars. I really enjoyed reading this book, and I think the author is a wonderful storyteller, but I would have preferred more continuity in the novel: the story follows an accordion, so the novel reads more like a loosely connected sequence of short stories. Each new story would take a few pages to get into, and once I found myself lost in the story, it would end and the next story would begin. If my personal taste leaned more toward short stories, I woul More...

You could never describe Proulx's writing as being sentimental. She has a talent for imagining gruesome deaths with not a little black humour mixed in.

This is a novel which reads like a series of short stories focused on families of different nationalities. The accordion is a linking device between them with little overlap.

By the end you feel you know exactly which race the author feels is deserving of some good luck and feels most sympathy for (this is hinted at on the page of quotes at the beg More...

This book deserves praise for how well it is researched, crafted, and written. The whole time I am reading the book, I am wondering how much of this Proulx has lived, how much of it she has made up, and how much of it is researched. We follow the accordion as it passes thru numerous hands, generations, regions of the country. Each passing of the accordion calls forth a short story of its own, with characters that for the most part have lived hard lives and will come to hard ends. I found the tra More...

Not as good as The Shipping News, but still definitely worth reading. It was a bit harder for me to be engaged because there is no primary protagonist that is followed through the book, unless you count the green accordion. And I didn't have any significant connection to it. It was maybe hard for me to be interested in a series of stories about possessors of an accordion because I don't think I've ever enjoyed any music I've heard come out of one. It has always just seemed kind of depressing, li More...

How many ways are there to die or be maimed horribly? Lots, apparently, and this book has a good selection. Having your hands sliced off during somebody else's sexual climax, for example.

This is gruesome stuff.

But enthralling. The exploration of America during the Twentieth Century, through the eyes and music of immigrants in family context, is fantastic in its detail, its pungency, its suspense.

Who will get the green accordion next? What adventures will it and they have during their passage tow More...

If this book was about 250 pages, I would have given it the highest rating, but by the end of it, I felt exhausted from a literary sense. Proulx is a truly talented writer, crafting so much detail and description into her prose that you can really see and sense her characters and scenes like no other authors I've read. The concept of the story was unique in that the main character is an accordion that gets accidentally passed through many hands over a 150 year period during pivotal American immi More...

This book may startle those who were charmed by the far more gentle and restrained The Shipping News. It is a far more original, far darker, and far edgier work.

This is, in one sense, the life story of an accordion, a work of love of by a destitute Italian immigrant whose dreams were doomed to fail, the living thing which is a music, a tradition. This accordion, much like the ring in The Lord of the Rings, seems to want to be found, and seems to pick people, often leaving their lives upside down More...

This one’s going to be more confession than critical commentary.

Seems like I’ve had reader’s block for a while. Makes me wonder what books I’ve been unfair to recently. It used to be that when I abandoned a book, that would be an automatic one-star review. I don’t need to nuance ratings for when I don’t like something (for me, two stars is a neutral review and three stars and up is positive), but I’m starting to dislike most everything I read, so for Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes, I’ll admit t More...

Another serious slog. I loved "The Shipping News", and I like Proulx's short stories, but this was not a winner for me. It is a series of vignettes vaguely interlinked by this little green accordion. If you're into accordions, maybe it's worth reading. Maybe. It's worth reading one or two of the vignettes. Proulx can write, no doubt, but this is not a fully realized novel. Pretty much everyone in every story is horrible, or has horrible things happen to them, or, usually, both. It's kind of a dr More...

I fell in love with Annie Proulx after reading Shipping News and chose Accordion Crimes to read next because the premise was fascinating. The story of a simple green accordion as it passes from its maker through a history of many hands. The story of America is told here, as each of the accordion players is from an immigrant family. Because so many stories crowd the pages, it is hard to identify with any one character. You start to care about the little accordion, but maybe not enough to keep eve More...

The premise sounded interesting: following the accordian through a series of owners from all walks of life. But the characters were extremely uninteresting. I didn't mind the book's darkness because I really didn't care at all what happened to any of the characters, tragic or otherwise. But it's not enough that it's boring... Proulx's writing style is so frustrating. One paragraph might be a single sentence, going on and on, through myriad descriptive phrases, punctuated with endless commas, so More...

I'm sorry to say I did not enjoy this. It was a slog to get through. Though the writing is sound technically I was looking for a through line. Somewhere. Anywhere.

Alright, I'm ok with this being more a collection of short stories or novella length pieces with some arc running through the length of the book. That link was nominal at best. So how about a through line within the individual chapters? Not to be found either.

In a novel with so many characters there are very few I ended up giving a d More...

I picked up this book because I LOVED The Shipping News and The Red Violin, which has the same story format as this book. I also love history, specifically the story of immigrants, so this book seemed to have it all for me.

I really don't like to give books bad reviews because I know a book is someone's deeply personal creation, but in this case, I must...

First of all, this is really a book of short stories masquerading as a novel. That might be okay for some, but I really don't like short stor More...

I so very nearly gave this book five stars. That I didn't is mainly a reflection of how harsh a marker I am; I look at the very few titles I've awarded five stars to, and I have to say this isn't quite as good. But saying that is still saying a lot. This book is moving, and very very real. It's the first time I read Proulx, but it won't be the last. Her prose is beautiful, and the structure of the book is genius. By following a little green accordion through the stories of its successive owners, More...

Just finished Accordion Crimes... what a relief to be done. The book sits heavy on your shoulders. You have to read it and you have to put it down and give it away at the same time. As the story develops, the question becomes, who will die or be maimed next? Life is tough and then you die a brutal death. It's not the accordian's fault. I wanted to plead it's case (no pun). Good writing and some exquisite detail, but the book is made up of short stories that once you connect with the character, t More...

I love Annie Proulx's short stories and her novel, Shipping News. This novel falls somewhere in between - not really a novel but an interconnected set of stories associated with accordions or, more accurately, one accordion, made in Sicily in the 1870s or 1880s. The stories range from sad to tragic and from funny to truly bizarre. One story is even set in Wyoming, reminding me of the Wyoming stories for which the author is famous. I like most of the stories associated with New Orleans, Iowa, Tex More...

Accordion Crimes traces the history of a small green accordion, as it's passed down through the hands of generations of various immigrants to America. I have read and liked The Shipping News, and the concept of this novel appealed to me immensely - I'm fascinated by immigrants/emigrants and their experience of leaving the home country and adopting to the new one, full of hopes for a better life - often escaping dire poverty and persecution. During the great transatlantic migrations at the turn o More...

Accordian Crimes, by Annie Proulx, really made me feel stupid, which is not a feeling I enjoy as a reader. I could tell that Ms. Proulx's prose was wonderful and I was astounded at her depth and breadth of knowledge, but I simply didn't understand what the point of the book was. She told the stories of the harrowing lives of miserable immigrants and marginalized folks in America, all of which were linked by the ownership of a little green two-row button accordian. So...life is short, nasty, and More...

Annie Proulx has taken home the big awards and answered the door when Hollywood came knocking. I'd read The Shipping News and a short story collection. I expect good writing when I pull something from the shelf that bares her moniker. Nothing prepared me for the virtuosity she could bring to the page until I read Accordian Crimes. I can't say that everyone will enjoy the morbidity of her tale nor the picaresque trail of a green accordian that leaves behind a hundred stories calling out for your More...

The beauty of E. Annie Proulx's stories lies in the masterful combination of simplicity, elegant prose, and refreshingly gritty truth. Thus, after The Shipping News and Heart Songs, the dense and didactic epic that is Accordion Crimes was moderately disappointing. Not only does this volume lack the grain of optimism that lends Proulx's other works a strong sense of veracity; in addition, meaningful connections to the characters are inhibited by excessively dense writing and a blatantly unambiguo More...

The book is beautifully written and researched, chronicling the immigrants who took up the accordion. Having been for decades with a man who plays the accordion and relates the past ethnic clubs and dances, I was intrigued by the title and premise of the book. I read some of the reviews after completing about 100 pages of the book, and felt at first that those claiming it to be dark and depressing didn't understand the genre. The book seemed to be a collection of short stories with their dark ir More...