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`The melting Post of 20th-century America comes to life in her hands' Waterstones Books Quarterly
-- WATERSTONES BOOKS QUARTERLY
-- WATERSTONES BOOKS QUARTERLY
Product Description
The third novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'The Shipping News', 'Accordion Crimes' spans generations, continents and a century and confirms the hallucinatory power of Proulx's writing. 'Accordion Crimes' is a masterpiece of story-telling that spans a century and a continent. It opens in 1890 in Sicily, when an accordion-maker and his son, carrying little more than his finest button accordion, begin their voyage to the teeming, violent port of New Orleans. Within a year, the accordion-maker is murdered by an anti-Italian lynch mob, but his instrument carries the novel into another community of immigrants: German-Americans founding a new town in South Dakota. Moving from South Dakota to Texas, from Montana to Maine, the nine instantly compelling and intricately connected sections of the novel illuminate the lives of the founders of a nation, descendants of Mexicans, Poles, Germans, Irish, Scots and Franco-Canadians. Through the music of the accordion they express their fantasies, sorrows and exuberance.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
...or around the USA in 100 years,
By A Customer
This review is from: Accordion Crimes (Paperback)
I loved this book - in fact I can't remember having read a better one for years.On the surface, it's the story of an accordian, from it's manufacture by the first owner and then through the lives of consequent owners. As a musician I related to the perceptive descriptions of the players of the instrument and all the other characters - of which there are many! But the theme is of immigration to the United States, and the often tough lives of those who moved there from diverse countries and cultures. The accordian is seen as an old-fashioned instrument, much like the traditions and cultures the immigrants have left behind, and the pressure (for most characters in the book) is to conform, give up tradition, their old languages and their old music and become 'true' Americans. Darkly humourous, funny yet tragic, this deep novel takes us through the 20th century (never too specific on date) with great historical detail and reads like a linked collection of short stories. I recommend it.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Up there with the Shipping News,
By A Customer
This review is from: Accordion Crimes (Paperback)
A damn fine book in the tradition familiar to Proulx's readers. Overall perhaps not as complete an achievement as "The Shipping News" but sections of the book read as well as anything she has written prviously. The story follows the progress of a green accordion as it passes through the hands of owners from a variety of national origins and classes. In this way Proulx tells the story of the development of the United States and its immigrants from the 19th centuary to neasr the present day. The accordion interweaves the stories of the characters and provides a thread to the narative. A book of haunting images.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A complex and beautiful celebration of diversity.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Accordion Crimes (Paperback)
This novel is certainly not an easy read, but I think those who shrug it off as depressing and dreary are really missing a great deal of the meaining it has to offer. It may be true that many of the characters come to unpleasant ends, but they often also achieve some measure of happiness along the way. Proulx's message seems to be one of niether hope nor dispair, but rather of life-affirmation; for life is made of equal measures of both, and these characters, who experience so much of both, are vibrantly, powerfully alive. The accordian (which is a brilliant metaphor for America, since it is one common element among so many different ethnicities) is both a blessing and a curse; as the image with which the novel leaves you so beautifully suggests, it is a fountain of possibilities, good and bad.
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