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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23468 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Review
'This novel confirms Proulx as one of the greatest American writers.' Independent 'The detail is breathtaking, her ear for dialogue matchless, her observation unsentimental, her pace infectious. She tackles death, sex and the gruesome with black hilarity and the skills of a born storyteller. Rich and dense, "Accordion Crimes" is a splendid novel.' The Times 'Annie Proulx has written an epic social history of America and the plight of the immigrant, which is astonishing in its breadth, heroic in the scale of its ambition and brilliant in its manner of realising them.' Daily Mail 'The glorious richness of the language continually makes you pause in wonder, the details pile up and surround you.' Scotsman 'Her range and scope are tremendous, shuttling through the warp of multiple cultures and spanning, by the end, a hundred years. And it is the range of detail that grips, richly concrete.' Spectator 'Vigorous, salty and extraordinary.' The Times

About the Author
Annie Proulx published her first novel 'Postcards' in 1991 at the age of 56. 'The Shipping News' won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award and the Irish Times International Prize. Her third novel, 'Accordion Crimes', was published in 1996. She is also the author of three short-story collections, 'Heart Songs' (1994), 'Close Range' (1999) and 'Bad Dirt' (2004). 'Brokeback Mountain' was made into an Oscar-winning film in 2005. 'Fine Just the Way It Is', her third collection of Wyoming short stories, was published in 2008.

Customer Reviews

...or around the USA in 100 years
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.

Up there with the Shipping News
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.

Weird Wonderful & Hugely entertaining.
Could be retitled a million ways to kick the bucket!
Has any book ever described more (strange & crazy) ways to leave this earth than this superb novel?
It reads like a Tarantino film but with greater humour & a real insight into the life and times of some of the greatest accordian players who've ever graced this planet!
... Read it you will not be disappointed.