Accordion Crimes - Couverture rigide

Accordion Crimes traces the long odyssey of a button accordion, an instrument made by a Sicilian who immigrates to New Orleans in 1891.

Imprisoned in a round-up of Italian suspects after the political murder of the chief of police, the accordion maker is lynched, and his accordion falls into the hands of Apollo, a black steamboat screwman. The instrument begins its
long, erratic voyage through 20th-century America, passing through the hands of the descendants of slaves, immigrants and their children, some of whom learn that the cost of becoming American is to surrender the private definition of self.

Accordion Crimes is alive with vividly drawn characters who sometimes meet violent, strange ends, and who, at other times, succeed in a hard world. Filled with indelible images, Proulx's novel is charged with sardonic wit and is, at different turns, darkly hilarious and heartbreakingly sad. What we see as the accordion weakens and disintegrates is a haunting and ominous sense of what is America.

John Sutherland The New Republic In scale, in vision and in imaginative darling, Accordion Crimes uses all the range and the resources of Proulx's mature prose....She is a great novelist.

Michael Dirda The Washington Post Book World You would think Proulx would have the simple decency to make her third novel merely so-so, if only to let someone else grab a little limelight. No such luck...She now seems to know everything about writing. And a fair amount about life, too.

Phoebe-Lou Adams Atlantic Monthly Splendid...Ms. Proulx is a magician.

Gail Caldwell Boston Sunday Globe A daringly intelligent work with a soul as wide as the Mississippi.

Kathleen Byrne Globe and Mail Review of Books Crisp and authoritative, her spare, dense prose is mesmerizing ...A majestic novel.