SOURCE: Akins, Ellen. “Dark Journeys Linked by the Sound of Music.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (23 June 1996): BR4.

In the following review, Akins commends Proulx's “overwhelming verisimilitude” in Accordion Crimes.

E. Annie Proulx does not repeat herself, which could be a curse, since every book she writes will not be The Shipping News—a novel so widely read and well-loved that it would be tough to follow. But tough is Proulx's strong suit and, as it turns out, the curse of repetition is for other writers—those with but one or two puny stories to tell in the same old long-suffering style. What might fill another writer's novel is dispatched in a page or two by Proulx in her new book, Accordion Crimes, and nothing is slighted in the process.

The plot, such as it is, follows the fortunes of an accordion through the lives of those into...