Yep, this book was totally awesome. I had already read one book by the not-so-illustrious (though not rightfully so) Annie Proulx, and I already knew I liked her writing style very much. Rich use of vocabulary, and wonderful images, as well as beautiful descriptions. She also has a very fine ear for dialogue and voice, which clearly shows in her writing.Needless to say that 'voice' was one of the most important aspects in this book. The premise is this: at the beginning of the book we see an Italian accordion maker who builds a little green two-row button accordion and takes it with him to the States. Of course the crossing to the States is not a story of unmitigated success, and the Italian accordion maker loses his accordion at some point (also, his life), after which the little accordion goes on a journey through the hands of different owners, all of which form the wildly variegated cast of Accordion Crimes.You might argue that the little green accordion is only a clever plot device to link the stories of completely unrelated characters together, but indeed, it is much more than that. The book recounts, shortly but concisely, stories of several generations of immigrants to the States. The first part is about an Italian, the second about a group of Germans, the third about a Mexican family living in Texas (after the annexation of Texas to the States; this book was also handy as background for my US history course), the fourth about a frenchman, and so on. The entire array of cultural background, languages and attitudes which come with such variety is displayed beautifully and described very competently. Language plays an important role, and Proulx takes efforts to insert native words, terms, traditions and concepts into her dialogues, as well as the various kinds of American slang this produces. But what was inevitably most attractive to me was, of course, the accordions. I say accordions because there were more accordions in there than just the little green two-row button accordion. In fact, every part of the book (with an immigrant of different origin) introduces a different kind of accordion, which I found delightful, because very few people know exactly how many kinds of accordions there are. Proulx has clearly done her research (at the beginning of the book I positively squealed when the Italian accordion maker is said to have learned his craft in Castelfidardo; now, Castelfidardo is a little Italian town dedicated solely to the production of accordions, and I have actually been there, and seen the inside of an accordion factory, so I was delighted to see how well-informed she was). We see the whole array of accordion types pass by, from tiny two-button row diatonic (Italian and German) accordions, to five button-row French chromatic accordions, to piano keyboard accordions, to Argentinian bandoneons. The various nationalities of these accordions are also described in detail, and I heard a couple of familiar brand names ring pleasantly in my ears.And with these various types of accordions belong various types of musical traditions. I think I've almost seen all of them: Italian songs, French valse musette, Spanish TexMex, Argentinian tango, South-American Cajun, you name it (this enumeration is only what I can remember off the top of my head). Also, various names of existing artists (more squeals when I read some names I knew). I found this delightful because it goes to show exactly how versatile the accordion is, and also because Proulx has one of the best ears I've ever known a writer to have. This goes for sounds you hear in the street, but the music she describes is masterfully written. Personally I find it very difficult to describe music, maybe because I'm a musician myself, but she does it wonderfully and accurately, and the result is enchanting.The only negative thing about this book is the fact that there are so many characters in it, and that the various characters which get the spotlight aren't developed all that well. Also, because it gets confusing after a while, and difficult to remember so many names. But to me the positive more than compensated for this minor objection. If you love music, and don't object to accordions, I would say this is a must-read for you. Go on. Feel the music.
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.[return][return]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:[return][return] 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. [return][return]Food, as in The Shipping News, makes its odd appearance from time to time:[return][return]"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."[return][return]You have to wonder about Proulx s own attitude towards food.[return][return]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. [return][return]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.[return][return]The end of the book is as bizarre as the rest of the story. Proulx is nothing if not consistent.[return][return]Highly recommended.
What do You think about Accordion Crimes (1997)?
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.
—Judy Vasseur
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.
—Craig Pittman
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.
—Tom
