Accordion Crimes (Paperback)

by Annie Proulx (Author)
Key Phrases: umbrella point, dead man shake, fucking chicken feed, Don't Let, The Colors of Horses, Reattached Arms (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Proulx found fertile, if rocky, soil for her first two novels (Postcards and The Shipping News) in the far northeastern corner of North America. In Accordion Crimes she ranges much further afield. The novel follows an accordion from the hands of its maker in Sicily in 1890 until it is flattened by a truck in Florida in 1996. In the intervening century it passes through the hands of a host of unlucky owners and their kin: Abelardo Relampago, who dies from the bite of a poisonous spider; Dolor Gagnon, decapitated by his own chain saw; Silvano, cut down in the jungles of Venezuela by an Indian's arrow. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
America's ethnic minorities have rarely been rendered with the insight, intuition and unsentimental candor that Proulx brings to the large canvas of characters and reaches of landscape in this ambitious new work. The narrative has eight parts, each composed of short vignettes that depict the cultural baggage?the attitudes, behaviors and social conditioning?that immigrants brought with them, and the ways in which they joined, yet held aloof from, American society. Beginning in the late 1800s and ending 100 years later, the novel follows a vividly realized cast of characters, whose names are as colorful as their stories: Ludwig Messermacher, Abelardo Relampago Salazar, Dolor Gagnon, Onesiphore Malefoot, Hieronim Przybysz. Their common bond is ownership of a green button accordion, which was brought to these shores by a Sicilian immigrant and, after his death at the hands of a lynch mob, was transported back and forth across the continent by various combinations of inheritance, violence and bad luck. With mesmerizing skill, Proulx summons up the attitudes and speech of her characters, vigorously detailing a formidable number of settings, including New Orleans, Hornet, Texas, Random, Maine, Prank, Iowa, and Old Glory, Minnesota. She can evoke a teeming, fetid slum as clearly as she can a Montana ranch. An invariable characteristic of these immigrants and their families is the tendency to think of others as "Americans." In their own minds, they are still Italians or Germans or Norwegians or Poles or French Canadian or Cajuns. Almost without exception, they express ancient prejudices and newfound racism: the New Orleans natives hate the Italians, who hate the blacks; Iowa's Germans hate the Irish. What makes all this so spectacular is th at Proulx is a master at incorporating potentially numbing detail and specificity?from the components of an accordion to the bloodlines of Appaloosas and the stages of a Polish funeral?into her vigorous prose. Traditional ethnic music?played by various characters during their brief ownership of the increasingly derelict accordion?is conveyed with impressive authority. The range of scenes, from a drunken birthday party that resembles an animated Booth cartoon to a brutal reaction to a civil rights sit-in at a lunch counter, bespeaks a brilliant imagination. Proulx makes grotesque accidents, bloody catastrophes and bizarre events seem an inescapable part of human existence. If eventually some sameness of mood occurs, and a resultant diminution of tension, this is balanced by the reader's interest in the accordion's odyssey and in the lives it touches en route. For this is a cautionary tale in which pride and greed and self-delusion vie with basic human needs for love, comfort and spiritual sustenance. BOMC dual main selection; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition. first pb edition (June 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684831546
• ISBN-13: 978-0684831541
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (85 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #120,060 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absurdities, chance circumstances and cruelties of life, December 25, 2000

By	Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is an ambitious novel of Americana told through the device of an
accordion brought to New Orleans in 1890 by a Sicilian immigrant. The
book is peopled with a huge variety of colorful characters, and the
immigrant experience of Italians, Africans, Germans, Mexicans, French,
Polish and Irish people are depicted with her skillful social
perception, outstanding dialog and overflowing images of the
absurdities, chance circumstances and cruelties of their lives. Each
of her people die grim and violent deaths, and live small and hatefull
lives. There are dozens of characters and not one of them is happy or
finds fulfillment. It is a dark novel, which is grim and depressing
with occasional comic elements which only enhance absurdities of
life.

As I got more deeply into the book, I found it hard to pick up
because I knew I would be bombarded with another sad story of
someone's useless and pain-filled life. And then I couldn't put it
down because, in spite of this, the skillful writing would pull me
along. The stories are loosely strung together, with occasional
flash-forwards for one of the characters, usually describing another
future ugly meaningless death. She's writing about the underclass.
And the reverse side of the American dream. She does it well. So
well, in fact, that her images of lynching, illness, accidents,
abusive relationships and cruelty are not easily forgotten. It is not
a pleasant picture. But yet, it is surprisingly refreshing. Perhaps
because, in spite of her deep and colorful characterizations, the
reader doesn't feel particularly sympathetic to their tragedies and
meaningless lives.

It's a good book, but read it only if you are
unafraid to enter a world of unrelenting pain.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Reverse Side of the American Dream, January 23, 2000

By	Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Accordion Crimes (Hardcover)

This is an ambitious novel of Americana told through the device of an accordion brought to New Orleans in 1890 by a Sicilian immigrant.

The book is peopled with a huge variety of colorful characters, and the immigrant experience of Italians, Africans, Germans, Mexicans, French, Polish and Irish people are depicted with her skillful social perception, outstanding dialog and overflowing images of the absurdities, chance circumstances and cruelties of their lives.

Each of her people die grim and violent deaths, and live small and hate-full lives. There are dozens of characters and not one of them is happy or finds fulfillment. It is a dark novel, which is grim and depressing with occasional comic elements which only enhance absurdities of life.

As I got more deeply into the book, I found it hard to pick up because I knew I would be bombarded with another sad story of someone's useless and pain-filled life. And then I couldn't put it down because, in spite of this, the skillful writing would pull me along.

The stories are loosely strung together, with occasional flash-forwards for one of the characters, usually describing another future ugly meaningless death.

She's writing about the underclass. And the reverse side of the American dream. She does it well. So well, in fact, that her images of lynching, illness, accidents, abusive relationships and cruelty are not easily forgotten. It is not a pleasant picture. But yet, it is surprisingly

refreshing. Perhaps because, in spite of her deep and colorful characterizations, the reader doesn't feel particularly sympathetic to their tragedies and meaningless lives.

It's a good book, but read it only if you are unafraid to enter a world of unrelenting pain.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not her best but still a treat, May 2, 2002

By	Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Annie Proulx is hard to beat as a writer who spins yarns and creates moods, places, and characters that live vividly in your mind long after the last capter of her always engrossing books is closed. ACCORDION CRIMES, by any other author, would have been cited an unqualified success, but Proulx has spoiled her legion of fans with her other books that intensively dissect characters whose lives she unravels in an inimitable way. In ACCORDION CRIMES all her gifts as a writer are intact but we lack a set of characters about whom we care. This book is more of a Canterbury Tales or a Thousand and One Nights with the unifying presence being that of an accordian passing from hand to hand among a fascinating but essentially unrelated group of emigrants. Proulx's immensely satisfying ability to inform us in detail about the most obscure subjects (such as the making and functioning of an accordian) alone satisfies the reader to stay with her journey from century to century. If there is a unifying element here it is the very heartbeat of the Americanization of foreign emigrants. And after all, we all are just that, at varying lengths of living here! A good read, if not up to Proulx's own high standards.