Annie Proulx's latest work is a strange hybrid. It is more a series of short stories than a novel; and though it is immensely readable, fusing sentiment and bleakness with Proulx's customary wit and irresistible relish for the quirky, some may find the whole ensemble less than a fully fledged work of fiction.
The Shipping News cohered memorably around the figure of Quoyle ('head shaped like a crenshaw É features as bunched as kissed fingertips'); but Proulx's recent work has tended to pull apart into brilliant but vividly discrete vignettes. She has produced several collections of short stories, a form which superbly suits an imagination fired by the solitude and geographic remoteness of her characters' lives (which can then be glimpsed but not exactly intruded upon). In Accordion Crimes, she leapt from tale to tale, linking her stories of immigrant and pioneer life around the 'biography' of an accordion which was handed on from one ill-fated owner to another.
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