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Annie Proulx: Accordian Crimes (1996, Scribner) 3 stars

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Annie Proulx brings the immigrant experience to life in this stunning novel …

I couldn't even.

1 star

I had no choice but to DNF this book; I couldn't continue to force myself to read it, even if I liked the concept of it. There were just too many times you could skip parts and still have a coherent story. In fact, if a lot of the unnecessary details were dropped? It would've been more fun to read.

Part of what made me at least read half of this book was that it was as if there were multiple short stories tied to this accordion and that it, somehow and without communicating, was the main character. I liked that the book was supposed to give views into multiple immigrant experiences in the US, though I found it odd that their negative experiences kept getting tied to the accordion rather than the xenophobic Americans.

But this book had too much superfluous detail. There were moments where things that weren't important to the story (especially in the chapter involving sex-crazed German immigrants) kept getting described to death, as if the audience is incapable of imagining anything. None of the detail added anything, taught me anything, made me think any differently. It just made me bored and frustrated, inevitably leading to me handing this book over to a Goodwill just to make it go away.