A wide variety of intriguing American stories all tied together by a small green accordion. ( )

The idea of following the life of an accordion is interesting. However there were so many individual stories and family connections and histories that I tended to lose track. Needs concentration to follow. Covered a big chunk of American hiistory which was interesting.

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 those groups. Each ethnic group—Italian, German, French-Canadian, Hispanic and others—has its own history of folk accordion music, and its own masters of the genre.

For those familiar with The Shipping News, Proulx’s style in this book is very different, although she has the same way of looking at the lives of ordinary people, viewing them at an angle that illuminates the oddities of their personalities, the traits and habits that set them apart from others. But in the former book, her prose style was very often abrupt, with short or part sentences that were as jarring as the landscape of Newfoundland. Accordion Crimes, on the other hand, is written with long, long sentences, many times filled with bizarre lists that illustrate the person or the era she is describing:

“He listened to the radio, it was better than the TV late at night, the distant hillbilly music and sermons and promises of cures from the wildcat border stations down in Mexico—funny their signal could reach all the way to Maine—offers for weight-loss tonics, pills to make you put on pounds, plastic broncos, moon pens, zircon rings, Yellow Boy fishing lures, apron patterns, twelve styles for just one dollar, rat killer and polystyrene gravestones, send no money, send your name and address in care of this station, less than a penny a capsule, for each order received before December 15 you’ll receive in addition, absolutely free, while this special offer lasts, insist on the genuine, prosperity, plain brown sealed wrapper, a package containing rigidly inspected pharmaceuticals, if you are nervous and wakeful at night.”

Food, as in The Shipping News, makes its odd appearance from time to time:

"Every morning Mrs. Pelky labored to his door on her bad ankles with a plate of curious cookery: Orange Buds, Pork Fruit Cake, Deviled Clams and Bean Mash, Lentil Loaf, or The poor Man’s Omelet—bread sopped in hot milk…..He ate everything she brought him for it was better than his own strange combinations, a peach and kale sandwich, macaroni and vinegar, canned salmon and rat cheese."

You have to wonder about Proulx’s own attitude towards food.

The book is sectioned in parts according to whoever the current owner, a member of a different ethnic group, is. Each part is broken up into many different titled subsection--The Pulp Truck, A Smell of Burning, Prank, Inspection-- sequences of events in the lives of the characters, allowing a narrative that doesn’t have to be absolutely continuous in order to run smoothly. It’s very effective.

While I loved the book overall and marveled at Proulx’s ability to find the bizarre in even the most ordinary of human lives, towards the end the long, long sentences started to wear me out. I found that I was skipping over them half-way through, anxious to get to the end and on to the next thought. I slowed down my reading rate, and that helped.

The end of the book is as bizarre as the rest of the story. Proulx is nothing if not consistent.

Highly recommended. ( )

Tells the story of white (primarily) American immigrants through the ages via the device of an accordion which passes through many people's hands. The premise can be summed up by the quote that "without black people, there would be no whites in America - just italians, germans, poles, etc."

Full of fascinating historical detail and excellent characters, but all of them meet untimely ends of one sort or another and it cannot be described as uplifting. Also required me to reach for the dictionary on a few occasions - not a bad thing per se, but not something I've had to do with a novel for a long time.

But this is excellent writing and well-crafted story-telling and, though it may require persistence - it did from me - it's ultimately worth it. ( )

I've so far only read two of Proulx's books, this and the Shipping News. I really enjoyed the Shipping News, but I found this one to be depressing and eventually tedious (though the Shipping News was rather depressing as well if I recall correctly).

I really enjoyed the first few stories here, but I just eventually got tired of it and was ready for the book to be over. I can't say exactly what it was that put me off - maybe it was the general bleakness of everything. She would here and there insert snippets - just a sentence or two - about what would later happen to a character, and it always ended badly for everyone.

While it's true that it pretty much always does end badly for everyone in reality, that doesn't mean that everything before the end is bleak and sad or that the sum of it all is despair. We'll all eventually die and death is usually horrible (the only way that it isn't is if it is quick, and then it is usually pretty horrible for that person's loved ones), and we'll all also be bad people at some point ; we'll do bad things and we'll say bad things, we'll hurt the people that we love, etc. But, the whole life of a person isn't sad (at least not all people), but in Accordion Crimes it always seemed like the message - over and over - was it all turns to shit, so don't bother.

That turned me off. The books was fairly good - writing was excellent and the characters were well drawn, it was just too bleak for me in this part of my life. ( )