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Accordion Crimes
From the Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Shipping News, Accordion Crimes spans a century and a continent. The novel illuminates the lives of the founders of the U.S.A., descendants of Mexicans, Poles, Irish, etc., all linked by the accordian.
544 pages, Paperback
First published June 19, 1996
340 people are currently reading
5017 people want to read
About the author
Annie Proulx
110 books3,424 followersEdna Annie Proulx (Chinese:安妮 普鲁) is an American journalist and author. Her second novel, The Shipping News (1993), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for fiction in 1994. Her short story "Brokeback Mountain" was adapted as an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe Award-winning major motion picture released in 2005. Brokeback Mountain received massive critical acclaim and went on to be nominated for a leading eight Academy Awards, winning three of them. (However, the movie did not win Best Picture, a situation with which Proulx made public her disappointment.) She won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her first novel, Postcards.
She has written most of her stories and books simply as Annie Proulx, but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx.
She has written most of her stories and books simply as Annie Proulx, but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 730 reviews
November 1, 2021
Accordion Crimes by Pulitzer-prize winning author E. Annie Proulx was a lush, sometimes beautiful, and at other times a harsh and a gritty book about the immigrant experience beginning in 1890 and spanning one-hundred years of immigration to America comprising of the Italians, the Germans, the Irish, the Basque, the Mexicans, the Polish, the French, the Africans and the Franco-Canadians as they all tried to work their way into the American, and oftentimes racist, culture at the cost of their identity, language and cherished traditions of their native cultures. E. Annie Proulx writes hauntingly and beautifully of the immigrant experience, some of her memorable lines:
Accordion Crimes is a series of short stories or episodes detailing different facets of the immigrant experience where each culture tries to preserve their music through the power of the accordion music, their last link to their native culture. Each section opens with a drawing of a different accordion as part of the immigrant story. But at its core of this book was a little green accordion with rivulets of light washed mother-of-pearl polished bone buttons and a small pair of oval mirrors rimmed in black paint as it was lovingly crafted by a master accordion maker in Sicily. But in 1890 he had dreams of a better life in "La Merica" so he and his eleven-year old son begin their journey ultimately entering the port of New Orleans. Thus begins the journey of the little green accordion as it travels from hand to hand over a hundred-year period and playing the music of many different ethnic groups as it was carried throughout the many regions of America, thus linking the different sections of the book.
Kirkus Reviews puts forth that this third novel of E. Annie Proulx "confirms her oft-noted similarity to Steinbeck--offers the most comprehensive survey of working-class life. . ." And I must say that I heartily agree.
"And so he was renamed and another fragment of self fell away like a flake of dust."
". . . his name taken from him, the language lost, his religion changed, the past unknown, the person he had been for the first two years of his life erased. He saw how a family held its members' identities as a cup holds water. The person he had been as a child, a French-speaking boy with a mother and a father, brothers and sisters had been dissolved by the acid of circumstance and accident. He was still that person."
". . . yet there was no way he could make them understand that he was not a peasant. It is not easy to remain yourself, to keep your dignity and place, in a foreign country."
Accordion Crimes is a series of short stories or episodes detailing different facets of the immigrant experience where each culture tries to preserve their music through the power of the accordion music, their last link to their native culture. Each section opens with a drawing of a different accordion as part of the immigrant story. But at its core of this book was a little green accordion with rivulets of light washed mother-of-pearl polished bone buttons and a small pair of oval mirrors rimmed in black paint as it was lovingly crafted by a master accordion maker in Sicily. But in 1890 he had dreams of a better life in "La Merica" so he and his eleven-year old son begin their journey ultimately entering the port of New Orleans. Thus begins the journey of the little green accordion as it travels from hand to hand over a hundred-year period and playing the music of many different ethnic groups as it was carried throughout the many regions of America, thus linking the different sections of the book.
Kirkus Reviews puts forth that this third novel of E. Annie Proulx "confirms her oft-noted similarity to Steinbeck--offers the most comprehensive survey of working-class life. . ." And I must say that I heartily agree.
January 2, 2008
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 we get a taste of the American immigrant experience through the lives of French-Canadians, Germans, Poles, Irish, African-Americans and the difficult lives they led. This book is a sensual, humorous feast and the detailed physical descriptions of people and environment caused me to dream more vividly. Very satisfying and so rich I could read it again and still be enraptured. I often had to put the book down to laugh out loud and absorb the visuals.
March 31, 2013
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 of the 19th century, as many as 30 million Europeans voluntarily came to the Americas - many of them to the United States, which was thought of as the land of gold.
While some prospered and became wealthy, many found the land they came to to be a place of empty promises - and hard work. Often having no possibility of returning to their home country, the immigrants had to stay and make someone else prosper. There's a great quote attributed to an anonymous Italian immigrant of the early 1900's: “I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, found out three things: First, the streets weren't paved with gold; second, they weren't paved at all: and third, I was expected to pave them.”
Appropriately, Proulx begins her novel with the story of an immigrant from Sicily - the maker of the accordion, who ventures with his instrument to New Orleans, with high hopes and dreams of a musical career. Upon arriving he discovers the bleakness and harshness of life in Louisiana, and is forced to do menial labor; New Orleans brings an end to his story, but the accordion survives. It travels all across the country and beyond, from Louisiana to Quebec, passing from hand to hand. Proulx gives voice to a vast group of immigrants of different background - Italian, German, Polish. I'm Polish and always get a kick out of Polish themes in foreign literature, and was very pleased to see that a whole portion of the book is devoted to Polish immigrants and their culture and society.
The book is relentlessly brutal - prejudices and racism among different ethnic groups guarantee for a great amount of violence, and Proulx catalogues one bloody incident after another; some of them are so grotesque that they are almost beyond belief - and sooner or later the reader will start wondering when the new characters are going to be dispatched, and what stroke of miserable bad luck will fall upon them. Proulx also has an annoying habit of providing summaries of what happened to some of the characters, important or not; these are provided in brackets after their role in the book is done. This gets old really fast, since the vignettes are so short and we barely get time to get interested in these people.
Because the immigrants are unrelated, and what connects them is only the small green accordion (and a string of bloody and grotesque unhappy events) the book feels disjointed and put together from a collection of individual stories without clear guidance, lacking coherence and a sense of progression. The Shipping News had Quoyle, his family and acquaintances and a wonderfully conveyed sense of place; characters of this novel are interesting but sketchy at best, and the jumps in the setting provide an interesting look at various immigrant settlements but without getting into too much detail - after all, it covers a century within its pages. Accordion Crimes, although very readable, seems to me to be more of an experiment which starts strong but goes out of tune as it nears the end. It's worth reading, but doesn't carry the impact of its predecessor.
While some prospered and became wealthy, many found the land they came to to be a place of empty promises - and hard work. Often having no possibility of returning to their home country, the immigrants had to stay and make someone else prosper. There's a great quote attributed to an anonymous Italian immigrant of the early 1900's: “I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, found out three things: First, the streets weren't paved with gold; second, they weren't paved at all: and third, I was expected to pave them.”
Appropriately, Proulx begins her novel with the story of an immigrant from Sicily - the maker of the accordion, who ventures with his instrument to New Orleans, with high hopes and dreams of a musical career. Upon arriving he discovers the bleakness and harshness of life in Louisiana, and is forced to do menial labor; New Orleans brings an end to his story, but the accordion survives. It travels all across the country and beyond, from Louisiana to Quebec, passing from hand to hand. Proulx gives voice to a vast group of immigrants of different background - Italian, German, Polish. I'm Polish and always get a kick out of Polish themes in foreign literature, and was very pleased to see that a whole portion of the book is devoted to Polish immigrants and their culture and society.
The book is relentlessly brutal - prejudices and racism among different ethnic groups guarantee for a great amount of violence, and Proulx catalogues one bloody incident after another; some of them are so grotesque that they are almost beyond belief - and sooner or later the reader will start wondering when the new characters are going to be dispatched, and what stroke of miserable bad luck will fall upon them. Proulx also has an annoying habit of providing summaries of what happened to some of the characters, important or not; these are provided in brackets after their role in the book is done. This gets old really fast, since the vignettes are so short and we barely get time to get interested in these people.
Because the immigrants are unrelated, and what connects them is only the small green accordion (and a string of bloody and grotesque unhappy events) the book feels disjointed and put together from a collection of individual stories without clear guidance, lacking coherence and a sense of progression. The Shipping News had Quoyle, his family and acquaintances and a wonderfully conveyed sense of place; characters of this novel are interesting but sketchy at best, and the jumps in the setting provide an interesting look at various immigrant settlements but without getting into too much detail - after all, it covers a century within its pages. Accordion Crimes, although very readable, seems to me to be more of an experiment which starts strong but goes out of tune as it nears the end. It's worth reading, but doesn't carry the impact of its predecessor.
February 9, 2008
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.
September 11, 2013
Alternate title: "Eight Million Ways to Die."
Unlike what seems like half the country, I have not read "The Shipping News" or anything else by E. Annie Proulx. But when I saw "Accordion Crimes" for sale for $1 on a library surplus books table, I picked it up and read the first page and was hooked. She offered a muscular prose style, but one that was in service to propelling the plot and giving life to the characters. The first line in particular, telling about the Sicilian who makes the accordion of the title, really grabbed me: “It was as if his eye were an ear and a crackle went through it each time he shot a look at the accordion."
And her description of how the Sicilian makes the little green accordion seemed to have a wonderful rhythm of its own: "He had cut the grille with a jeweler's saw from a sheet of brass, worked a design of peacocks and olive leaves. The hasps and escutcheons that fastened the bellows frames to the case ends, the brass screws, the zinc reed plate, the delicate axle, the reeds themselves, of steel, and the aged Circassian walnut for the case, he had purchased all of these. But he had constructed and fashioned the rest."
Through the next 500 pages, her writing style never flagged -- for instance, she writes of an obese elderly woman who has ''skin like a slipcover over a rump-sprung sofa.'' But I did.
For the longest time I thought this book, which strings together vignettes of lives through the 20th century by linking them with how the accordion is passed along from hand to hand, was a way to examine the role that immigrants played in making America the vital place it is today. I should have taken as a warning a line from early in the book: .''America is a place of lies and bitter disappointment,'' shouts an Italian who is imprisoned with the Sicilian accordion-maker during a riot in New Orleans. ''It promises everything but eats you alive.''
That becomes Proulx's theme. There's not a kid who isn't abused or neglected, not an adult who isn't disappointed or weirded out in some way. And with only one or two exceptions, everyone dies in a strange and brutal way: chainsaw suicide, plutonium poisoning, electrocution by worm probe. The only two characters who die in their beds don't die gently -- one is bitten three times by a poisonous spider and the other, nearly dead from cancer, is slaughtered by her ax-wielding husband, who then leaps to his own death from the top of his grain silo. Even minor characters are subjected to this sort of grim and grisly fate: The grandson of German immigrants who once owned the green accordion visits Yellowstone Park, where he ''dropped a roll of film, trod on it, lost his balance and fell headlong into a seething hot spring, and despite eyes parboiled blind and the knowledge of impending death, clambered out -- leaving the skin of his hands like red gloves on the stony edge -- only to fall into another, hotter pool.''
When I was about halfway through the book, still enamored of her magical grasp of how music informs our lives and her ability to describe that feeling, I would have given this book five stars. But by the time I got 3/4 of the way through, all those awful deaths began piling up on me and I was ready to dock her a star for that and for her habit of dumping long, pointless lists into her pages as if trying to pad out her word count. When I finally got to page 541, I had knocked another star off for the repeated and dispiriting demeaning of blacks by the other immigrants. We see little or nothing in the few black characters in this book to contradict those bigoted jibes, and that disappointed me as well.
In short, by the end, this squeezebox of a book lost its sprightly tune and became just one long, annoying wheeze.
Unlike what seems like half the country, I have not read "The Shipping News" or anything else by E. Annie Proulx. But when I saw "Accordion Crimes" for sale for $1 on a library surplus books table, I picked it up and read the first page and was hooked. She offered a muscular prose style, but one that was in service to propelling the plot and giving life to the characters. The first line in particular, telling about the Sicilian who makes the accordion of the title, really grabbed me: “It was as if his eye were an ear and a crackle went through it each time he shot a look at the accordion."
And her description of how the Sicilian makes the little green accordion seemed to have a wonderful rhythm of its own: "He had cut the grille with a jeweler's saw from a sheet of brass, worked a design of peacocks and olive leaves. The hasps and escutcheons that fastened the bellows frames to the case ends, the brass screws, the zinc reed plate, the delicate axle, the reeds themselves, of steel, and the aged Circassian walnut for the case, he had purchased all of these. But he had constructed and fashioned the rest."
Through the next 500 pages, her writing style never flagged -- for instance, she writes of an obese elderly woman who has ''skin like a slipcover over a rump-sprung sofa.'' But I did.
For the longest time I thought this book, which strings together vignettes of lives through the 20th century by linking them with how the accordion is passed along from hand to hand, was a way to examine the role that immigrants played in making America the vital place it is today. I should have taken as a warning a line from early in the book: .''America is a place of lies and bitter disappointment,'' shouts an Italian who is imprisoned with the Sicilian accordion-maker during a riot in New Orleans. ''It promises everything but eats you alive.''
That becomes Proulx's theme. There's not a kid who isn't abused or neglected, not an adult who isn't disappointed or weirded out in some way. And with only one or two exceptions, everyone dies in a strange and brutal way: chainsaw suicide, plutonium poisoning, electrocution by worm probe. The only two characters who die in their beds don't die gently -- one is bitten three times by a poisonous spider and the other, nearly dead from cancer, is slaughtered by her ax-wielding husband, who then leaps to his own death from the top of his grain silo. Even minor characters are subjected to this sort of grim and grisly fate: The grandson of German immigrants who once owned the green accordion visits Yellowstone Park, where he ''dropped a roll of film, trod on it, lost his balance and fell headlong into a seething hot spring, and despite eyes parboiled blind and the knowledge of impending death, clambered out -- leaving the skin of his hands like red gloves on the stony edge -- only to fall into another, hotter pool.''
When I was about halfway through the book, still enamored of her magical grasp of how music informs our lives and her ability to describe that feeling, I would have given this book five stars. But by the time I got 3/4 of the way through, all those awful deaths began piling up on me and I was ready to dock her a star for that and for her habit of dumping long, pointless lists into her pages as if trying to pad out her word count. When I finally got to page 541, I had knocked another star off for the repeated and dispiriting demeaning of blacks by the other immigrants. We see little or nothing in the few black characters in this book to contradict those bigoted jibes, and that disappointed me as well.
In short, by the end, this squeezebox of a book lost its sprightly tune and became just one long, annoying wheeze.
August 2, 2008
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 accordions and Proulx lavishes detail on many.
But though she exhibits an exquisite knowledge of the various instruments, Proulx is never able to elevate the accordions to the level of characters. And since her characters are generally unappealing, boring and short-lived, it's hard to really find anything in this book to latch on to.
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 accordions and Proulx lavishes detail on many.
But though she exhibits an exquisite knowledge of the various instruments, Proulx is never able to elevate the accordions to the level of characters. And since her characters are generally unappealing, boring and short-lived, it's hard to really find anything in this book to latch on to.
January 4, 2008
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, Salinger, Rushdie (Ha!), generally are), and I think that that is essential to the quality of her writing. She SEES things, BECAUSE she is so small, so internal, so curled on herself, and in the seeing and the describing she makes the mundane, funkin' gorgeous.
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, Salinger, Rushdie (Ha!), generally are), and I think that that is essential to the quality of her writing. She SEES things, BECAUSE she is so small, so internal, so curled on herself, and in the seeing and the describing she makes the mundane, funkin' gorgeous.
May 27, 2009
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 attentions. What I can assure you is the pleasure of a storyteller extraordinaire. Proulx is a master at work. May she live long and write and write and write.
June 15, 2023
Accordion Crimes by Annie Proulx Book Discussion
https://youtu.be/ZXDuYdDO5-0
https://youtu.be/ZXDuYdDO5-0
November 11, 2021
Annie Proulx in my view is probably no 1 in my choice of top authors. The sheer diversity of character personification and the intensity of emotional descriptions are quite inimitable. Of course each story revolves around one theme - in this case an accordion which is incidental to the story - but makes the rest of the details come alive.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
January 26, 2016
Many cultures preserve their heritage through traditional music and dance (among other things). So it was a stroke of genius, in my opinion, for Proulx to use a musical instrument, the accordion of the title, as a narrative device to hold together the eight stories which together make up this wonderful novel.
'Accordion Crimes' is essentially a social history of the immigrant experience in America, beginning with the accordion maker in 19th century Sicily who crosses the ocean for a better life, right through to the Norwegian entrepreneur who makes a fortune by selling antique furniture around the time of the Gulf War. It could have been terribly dry and dull, held hostage by erudition. Mercifully it is anything but. Proulx applies her considerable scholarship with a very light touch. Plot is key and the focus then becomes the very entertaining stories.
In these stories we see people determined to make something of themselves, even though it is often a struggle with poverty, disease, the language barrier and so forth in this new and sometimes bewildering country. Characters in the book appear to take one of two basic approaches: celebrating and promoting the culture of their homeland or suppressing it in order to become more fully immersed in their adopted one; to be more fully American. It is the tension between those two that provides much of the drama in the book. Often the second approach is a survival mechanism, for inevitably they all encounter prejudice and racism (from which faults they, being human, are not immune themselves either). Such bigotry appears to shift its focus on a regular basis. No sooner are people used to one group of people, than there are new arrivals at whom such bile can be directed. Sometimes it is mere name calling, sometimes it is reduced opportunities for education or employment, sometimes it is violent and bloody. On at least one occasion in the book, it results in murder.
Despite each opportunity being short, characters are very well drawn, engaging the reader from the beginning. This is owing to and illustrative of Proulx's excellent and beautiful writing. Her descriptive passages are a delight and cliche free. For example:
"By this time there was red-edged cloud over every black building and from some buildings issued vapors colored by the time of day. The exhaust from the power plant thick and beautiful like violet cloud, the moire waste ponds azure and cobalt, magenta, the bulldozed earth heaped in vast demilunes that jet passengers peering through face-sized glass might see as overlapping fruit slices of a topographic tarte aux pommes." (p 436) Much of the subject matter may seem depressing, but there is a joy to it all to. Partly sheer joie de vivre, often shown by the music and dancing. But also moments of humour. This rather wonderful word play caused me to actually laugh out loud:
"Hey Gibby, a family of Basques gets caught in a revolving door. Know what the moral is? Don't put all your Basques in one exit." (p 447)
If I had to find fault with it at all, and that is extremely difficult, the only thing I can say is that the ending felt rather abrupt. I wanted to know more about the children and the money. And I wanted that poor battered green accordion to be restored to its former glory. But all that shows is how well Proulx engages with and draws the reader in, leaving you wanting more, not wanting the story to end.
Highly recommended. This was the first Proulx I have read. It will not be my last.
'Accordion Crimes' is essentially a social history of the immigrant experience in America, beginning with the accordion maker in 19th century Sicily who crosses the ocean for a better life, right through to the Norwegian entrepreneur who makes a fortune by selling antique furniture around the time of the Gulf War. It could have been terribly dry and dull, held hostage by erudition. Mercifully it is anything but. Proulx applies her considerable scholarship with a very light touch. Plot is key and the focus then becomes the very entertaining stories.
In these stories we see people determined to make something of themselves, even though it is often a struggle with poverty, disease, the language barrier and so forth in this new and sometimes bewildering country. Characters in the book appear to take one of two basic approaches: celebrating and promoting the culture of their homeland or suppressing it in order to become more fully immersed in their adopted one; to be more fully American. It is the tension between those two that provides much of the drama in the book. Often the second approach is a survival mechanism, for inevitably they all encounter prejudice and racism (from which faults they, being human, are not immune themselves either). Such bigotry appears to shift its focus on a regular basis. No sooner are people used to one group of people, than there are new arrivals at whom such bile can be directed. Sometimes it is mere name calling, sometimes it is reduced opportunities for education or employment, sometimes it is violent and bloody. On at least one occasion in the book, it results in murder.
Despite each opportunity being short, characters are very well drawn, engaging the reader from the beginning. This is owing to and illustrative of Proulx's excellent and beautiful writing. Her descriptive passages are a delight and cliche free. For example:
"By this time there was red-edged cloud over every black building and from some buildings issued vapors colored by the time of day. The exhaust from the power plant thick and beautiful like violet cloud, the moire waste ponds azure and cobalt, magenta, the bulldozed earth heaped in vast demilunes that jet passengers peering through face-sized glass might see as overlapping fruit slices of a topographic tarte aux pommes." (p 436) Much of the subject matter may seem depressing, but there is a joy to it all to. Partly sheer joie de vivre, often shown by the music and dancing. But also moments of humour. This rather wonderful word play caused me to actually laugh out loud:
"Hey Gibby, a family of Basques gets caught in a revolving door. Know what the moral is? Don't put all your Basques in one exit." (p 447)
If I had to find fault with it at all, and that is extremely difficult, the only thing I can say is that the ending felt rather abrupt. I wanted to know more about the children and the money. And I wanted that poor battered green accordion to be restored to its former glory. But all that shows is how well Proulx engages with and draws the reader in, leaving you wanting more, not wanting the story to end.
Highly recommended. This was the first Proulx I have read. It will not be my last.
August 11, 2008
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 interest in or attachment to.
February 7, 2025
An accordion passes from hand to hand in 19th and 20th century America. It is, therefore, the wanderings and the lives of his emigrants of various origins. We will follow Poles, Germans, French, and Norwegians, all constituting a superb picture of America.
Annie Proulx is one of the great American writers of today, no doubt about it. And she's not well known enough. Read it! You can start with this book that you won't let go in.
Annie Proulx is one of the great American writers of today, no doubt about it. And she's not well known enough. Read it! You can start with this book that you won't let go in.
September 6, 2007
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.
October 7, 2010
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 transitions a bit disruptive. You don't work up a full head of steam with a central protagonist. But each vignette is well rendered and her stories come across as deeply felt. The accordion is a conceit to keep the story moving along. Sometimes it and the music it makes and what the music means to the people is forefront, but more often than not it is a prop, and barely mentioned at all. The accordion seems to be a curse that is handed on to the next generation, the music but a temporary salve to insanity and lives of desolation.
February 4, 2015
I started this with so much hope, following a positive review from my sister. My sister who shall henceforth be renamed She Who Cannot Be Trusted In Matters Of Literature. It's a book with a litany of godawful characters, the first likeable person appears at page 512. PAGE 512 IN A BOOK THAT IS 543 PAGES LONG! The lesson I have learnt from this book is that I dislike spending time with ugly personalities both in person and in literature.
May 25, 2012
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 that, by the end of the sentence, you have completely lost the point. Then the next paragaph is a collection of short thoughts. Single phrases. Broken into sentences. I was so distracted by the run-on sentences and the dramatic stylistic shifts, that what little empathy I might have mustered for any of the characters was totally lost.
September 30, 2013
I'm still reeling from this novel. I could hardly bear to put it down in the evening, and read it in giant, sustaining gulps. I loved it.
I cannot recommend it highly enough--I would put this in my personal top 10 novels, certainly my top 5 contemporary American novels--and Annie Proulx is remarkable.
I've moved right into reading Heartsongs--short stories by Proulx. I can't get enough of her 'radiant prose.'
Read this book, my friends. It is brilliant.
I cannot recommend it highly enough--I would put this in my personal top 10 novels, certainly my top 5 contemporary American novels--and Annie Proulx is remarkable.
I've moved right into reading Heartsongs--short stories by Proulx. I can't get enough of her 'radiant prose.'
Read this book, my friends. It is brilliant.
June 22, 2025
Įvairių tautybių ir laikotarpių imigrantų į JAV istorijos, kurias sieja akordeonas – per jas atsiskleidžia ir XX amžiaus JAV istorija, ir paskirų bendruomenių ypatybės. Perskaičiusi galvojau: „buvo ne tik labai įdomu, bet ir nelabai“ – nežinau, gal įsijausti trukdė fragmentiškumas, o gal kaip tik per didelis detalumas kiekvienos iš istorijų (na, kokią čia dar keistenybę pas šitą šeimą įkišti?), bet šiaip gera knyga. Didelę nostalgiją sukėlė popierinis Tyto Albos senosios serijos "Geriausios XX a. pabaigos knygos" formatas.
January 24, 2010
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 immigration years. The story highlights the unique cultures of various European immigrants combined with the challenges of assimilating in a new land. Each chapter can almost stand alone as a short story in itself due to the amount of character development and the intricacy of the sub-plots, but all these intricacies just got to be too much by the end. It was almost like spending too much time studying an intellectual topic: after awhile, you just need a break. A very good book for those who love very intricate, detailed character development with a plethora of description. Those who want conversation between characters and a fast-moving plot, you're going to hate this book. It's like a foreign language indie film: a lot to offer if you don't mind sitting through subtitles and "director's creative license". In the end, however, I really respect Proulx as a talented, intellectual writer if nothing else.
June 27, 2019
oh boy... this is a tough one to rate. i adore annie proulx, and her writing is so good. but, man, did this book draaaaag for me, and i am not totally sure why. the book is a series of connected short stories, with the common denominator being an accordion. each character who ends up with the little green accordion is well portrayed by proulx, and some of the settings are very vividly created. and yet, i found it so clunky and disjointed. i never got into a good flow with this, and it feels like i've been reading this book for months and months. it was a clever idea to base these stories around the travels of the accordion, and the lives into which it landed. i wish i enjoyed reading it so much more than i did. 4-stars for the writing. 2-stars for the stories.
May 9, 2019
The frame of this novel is the history of a single accordion, from its manufacture in Italy to the late twentieth century. But the rollicking heart of this story is of people and their cultures, how this one simple accordion encompasses so many styles of music, all of which are an integral part of the immigrant experience. America is here in messy, hot-hearted, bigoted, hateful and loving expressions. Life and death, disfigurement, addiction, and the private agonies of lost loves are here in Proulx's frenetic, unsparing style.
September 30, 2019
Come for the unceasing suffering, stay for the endless slurs. What is the point of this book? 3X wasn’t fast enough.
May 21, 2012
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 damn about. And when I did, their story lines got broken mid chapter when the focus suddenly changes to some second cousin of the character you were just starting to like, with no explanation.
I'm trying to exercise a "get 80 pages in and if you don't like it don't think twice about putting it down" philosophy toward my reading. At 80 pages I still had hope. But as I got closer to halfway it became a challenge. Nearing the end I was just seeking vindication, closure of this work that I actually held a grudge against, that I felt had wronged me somehow. Am I going overboard?
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 damn about. And when I did, their story lines got broken mid chapter when the focus suddenly changes to some second cousin of the character you were just starting to like, with no explanation.
I'm trying to exercise a "get 80 pages in and if you don't like it don't think twice about putting it down" philosophy toward my reading. At 80 pages I still had hope. But as I got closer to halfway it became a challenge. Nearing the end I was just seeking vindication, closure of this work that I actually held a grudge against, that I felt had wronged me somehow. Am I going overboard?
April 20, 2017
Un acordeón construido en Italia llega a los Estados Unidos. Durante más de cien años pasa por muchas manos. Esta es la historia de todos sus poseedores y sus familias. Así que los personajes viven un capítulo apenas. Pero la autora mantiene algunos temas a través de los años: hay muchos músicos y músicas; también los personajes son todos emigrantes o hijos de ellos.
Con estas premisas Proulx hizo una novela apasionante. Desde el luthier italiano hasta el último negro que poseyó el verde acordeón todos los personajes atrapan al lector. Con lírica apasionada Proulx escribe muchas líneas sobre la música (y pese a que no sé nada del tema no me aburrieron). Lo que me gustó es esto: en diez renglones o en veinte páginas se dibujan destinos completos, acabados, vidas enteras. Es la historia de los llegados a América, su desarraigo y la construcción de sus descendientes como americanos. Los recienvenidos son odiados por todos y cada quien odia a quien puede: irlandeses, alemanes, húngaros, indios, franceses, mexicanos, chinos y más. Aparentemente el peor origen es el italiano.
Con estas premisas Proulx hizo una novela apasionante. Desde el luthier italiano hasta el último negro que poseyó el verde acordeón todos los personajes atrapan al lector. Con lírica apasionada Proulx escribe muchas líneas sobre la música (y pese a que no sé nada del tema no me aburrieron). Lo que me gustó es esto: en diez renglones o en veinte páginas se dibujan destinos completos, acabados, vidas enteras. Es la historia de los llegados a América, su desarraigo y la construcción de sus descendientes como americanos. Los recienvenidos son odiados por todos y cada quien odia a quien puede: irlandeses, alemanes, húngaros, indios, franceses, mexicanos, chinos y más. Aparentemente el peor origen es el italiano.
April 24, 2008
Sigh. I had such a hard time with "The Shipping News" -- god knows why I turned straiht to another Proulx novel. I think I was hoping I'd like this one more. But I just didn't. It was fine at first, although the characters and situations continually struck me as overdrawn. But what I disliked the most is that, so far as I can tell, it's more a collection of short stories rather than a coherent novel. Yes, there's the accordian in each section, but that's about it. And I really didn't care enough about this accordian to keep tracing it's story throughout the higlights of American history. Maybe I'll try this book again someday, but for now it's going back to the library largely unread.
January 23, 2026
This was one of the most creatively written and well-researched novels I have ever read. Divided into 5 novellas, the common thread is a handmade squeezebox accordion that passes through the hands of players of succeeding generations. Most of the "crimes" are believable yet still outrageous. This is the third novel of Proulx I have read, following The Shipping News and That Old Ace in the Hole. Spoiler alert: Don't forget about the $1,000 bills hidden away inside.
August 10, 2020
I got half way through. This was not a good book. It's the story of American immigrants over 100 years with the accordion as the centerpiece. I don't care what the crime was. The accordion was like the hope diamond of musical instruments. Everyone who had it encountered a tragic death. There were needless details, too many characters, and many unpleasant parts.
April 5, 2025
This is American history as prose poetry, with an Italian immigrant's handmade accordion providing the thread that connects the characters and the decades as it passes from hand to hand and generation to generation. Proulx packs more into a short paragraph than any writer I have read, pouring on historic detail, connecting past and present, even projecting into the future to trace the fates of her characters (99.9% of whom end tragically). The transitions come quickly, and I sometimes had to backtrack to realize I had left one character or timeline to begin tracking another. This is electrifying stuff, but it's also very dense, and about six or seven accordion tales in, it starts to wear on the reader just a bit. The desperate, degraded experiences of many of the characters become interchangeable in the mind, but I never got the sense that Proulx didn't love every one of them, each in a special way. A great book, perhaps not to be read straight through, but like the Bible or a collection of poetry, to be dipped into and savored over time.
December 30, 2019
I think Annie Proulx deserves to be called the Mistress of Bizarre Deaths. The cruel ways in which characters meet their ends was already what I remember her Wyoming stories for, but this book tops all of those!
The only stable factor within Accordion Crimes (except for the deaths) is a little green accordion, which throughout the book gets into the hands of countless people from various descent. Roughly a century goes by, while Proulx takes us on a wild and windy road through her limitlrss fantasy. The book is divided into 8 parts, and each of those has families with other roots in focus: Italian, African, German, Irish, French, Mexican, Polish, Norwegian, and travelling through the States of Louisiana, Iowa, Texas, Maine, Illinois, Montana, and Mississippi. While telling stories of ordinary people, all with some interest in accordion/traditional/folk music, Proulx gives us insight into the history of migrants, acceptance, assimilation or staying true your own traditions, and racism in the US. Even within the seperate parts of the books there are short stories, which makes me marvel about the immense variety of stories and character Annie Proulx has in store. Her harsh humor made me smile quite some times, the US is a bitter country when you base your impressions on Proulx' narrations. Nevertheless, I always love to get lost in them.
The only stable factor within Accordion Crimes (except for the deaths) is a little green accordion, which throughout the book gets into the hands of countless people from various descent. Roughly a century goes by, while Proulx takes us on a wild and windy road through her limitlrss fantasy. The book is divided into 8 parts, and each of those has families with other roots in focus: Italian, African, German, Irish, French, Mexican, Polish, Norwegian, and travelling through the States of Louisiana, Iowa, Texas, Maine, Illinois, Montana, and Mississippi. While telling stories of ordinary people, all with some interest in accordion/traditional/folk music, Proulx gives us insight into the history of migrants, acceptance, assimilation or staying true your own traditions, and racism in the US. Even within the seperate parts of the books there are short stories, which makes me marvel about the immense variety of stories and character Annie Proulx has in store. Her harsh humor made me smile quite some times, the US is a bitter country when you base your impressions on Proulx' narrations. Nevertheless, I always love to get lost in them.
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