Book Reviews:

ACCORDION CRIMES

Proulx capped the 1993 PEN/Faulkner Award for her first novel "Postcards" with the Pulitzer Prize (among others), in 1994, for "The Shipping News". A hard act to follow? Yes, but Proulx does it with her latest work, "Accordion Crimes", which is another example of her originality, her masterful storytelling style and the power of her language.

"Accordion Crimes" is divided into nine sections, the whole spanning one hundred years. The characters of each section do not meet, are further divided by race, or colour, or both, but they are united by the green, two-button accordion. Some express themselves through it, others, desperate to find themselves, seek to rediscover a lost culture – in it or other accordions. For some, the search only compounds their sense of alienation and inadequacy but, along the way, the dreams, aspirations and hopes of them all go to nourish a young nation.

Proulx begins by introducing us to the accordion maker. He “was not interested in making ordinary accordions” and so fashioned an instrument like no other. It was quick and sure, dissonant and harmonious but:

From a distance the voice of the instrument sounded hoarse and crying, reminding listeners of the brutalities of love, of various hungers. The notes fell, biting and sharp; it seemed the tooth that bit was hollowed with pain.

With this foreshadowing, "Accordion Crimes" begins. The Sicilian accordion maker takes his green accordion to “La Merica” to make his fortune but loses his life, and the regard of his son, Silvano, who despises his father for his inability to change. Silvano, “burning with hatred for Sicilians”, learns to speak American, changes his name to Bob Joe, and so exits the story. The accordion maker’s tale has ended but the accordion’s story is only beginning.

The music of the accordion is heard in every section of this book; from the lively, foot-tapping polka played by the Germans, to the lunatic notes the Basque sheepherder sends echoing through the mountains near the end of its life, the accordion plays the music of many different ethnic groups”.

From New Orleans to North Dakota, Texas, Montana and Maine, the accordion makes the acquaintance of the many communities of immigrants who peopled the lands there. The themes of identity, love, hunger and pain ties them, and the sections of the book, together. And, at the end, the accordion gives up its secret, but who is there to find it?

Proulx’s characters, America’s ethnic minorities – Italians, Sicilians, Germans, Poles, Mexicans, Irish-Scots, Franco-Canadians – all learned “that to be foreign, … not to be American, was a terrible thing” but still some strove to hold onto their cultural identity, and suffered for it. Their descendants, who made conscious decisions to change, suffered in other ways – from the scorn of those they sought to emulate and from the loss of their ethnic identity.

Proulx’s research for this book was prodigious and the result is a mix of fact and fiction that reifies the whole work. The canvas she worked on is large but, without sentimentality, Proulx presents the reader with characters whose exuberance shines from the page, whose pain bleeds red and raw and ugly from each well-chosen word, and whose hopes and dreams echo many of our own. Above all is the music that came from the people, the poor people in the fields, the people who helped build a nation. And still the secret of the accordion waits to be found.

M is for Malice

This is the thirteenth of the Kinsey Millhone mysteries, the author having set herself the daunting task of working through all twenty-six letters of the alphabet. In the first, "A is for Alibi", Kinsey was thirty-two years old; in "M is for Malice" she is thirty-five, still twice divorced and has no children.

On the surface, Kinsey, except for her gender (although even this is no longer the novelty it once was) is the stereotypical private eye readers have come to expect of this genre. She served for a time in the police force, has friends but few who are close, is dedicated, lives alone, and is basically a loner. She battles against evil in the struggle for law and order. She will take on just about anything to make ends meet although, with twenty-five thousand dollars in the bank, she can turn down jobs that will not suit. There is more to Kinsey than meets the eye however and another level to the story beyond that of the murder mystery. But more of that later,

This story begins the way many of this genre do – with a missing person. Kinsey is commissioned to find Guy Malek, to inform him of his father’s death and his subsequent inheritance. This should be a pleasant task but Kinsey is not happy about the assignment because of some sixth sense, or because her cousin is involved, or perhaps both.

If the story was to continue in typical fashion one would expect the corpse to enter the scene near to the beginning of the book, but that doesn’t happen in his case. In fact, for half the novel the reader could be forgiven for almost believing there will be no murder, despite the title. I say almost because subtle clues point to who will be murdered, and by whom. Without these, readers might not be inclined to read on if a straight out murder mystery is what they are expecting.

In real life, it is ill-advised for professionals to become ‘involved’ but in fiction stories would soon lose appeal if there was no interaction, beyond the professional, between characters. In Kinsey’s case, she cannot help herself; she feels a tie to Guy Malek that has more to do with the spiritual than the physical.

Kinsey’s emotional response to Guy leads me to that other level of mystery which is evident in this, and other books in these Millhone mysteries. A good mystery novel presents a problem or a crime, gives clues, and encourages readers to take part in the solution. "M is for Malice" does all this and more for the book, like those from A to L preceding it, is also a vehicle for investigating people – what makes them tick – and relationships. While the fictional private eye is carrying out her brief, and the reader, along with her, is trying to find answers, Kinsey herself is under the microscope.

Crime and mystery novels today have moved away from featuring a flat, two-dimensional heroic detective figure. Kinsey is real, someone we can relate to. Her closet is riddled with emotional skeletons, which we glimpse now and again. To put it bluntly, Kinsey would be a psychologist’s dream, a lost and hurting soul any self-respecting transactional analyst would love to get their hands on.

Robert Dietz, an old love of Kinsey’s, enters the story early on and past hurts flare up, threatening her. She is looking for permanency, (Dietz is not), yet she has difficulty in allowing someone into her private space. Tasha, one of Kinsey’s newly discovered cousins, is almost her physical double. It is she, in her profession of attorney, who hires Kinsey to find Guy. Kinsey later tells Dietz that, out of perversity she hadn’t intended to agree but greed and curiosity – both basic requirements of the fictional detective – got the better of her. Pressed, Kinsey admits that she is afraid her cousins (Tasha has two sisters) will not respect her boundaries, will invade her space. It is obvious that there are many unresolved conflicts in Kinsey’s past; the question is, will she solve them before the end of this novel, or will they keep popping up until the author reaches Z is for …? One has to wonder, especially in light of a comment, made by Kinsey at the beginning of this novel, that there is a tale to tell, but one she doesn’t intend to tell (yet).

Getting back to the main story – that of malice, money and murder – Kinsey does what all good private eyes do; she detects. How she does this is virtually the same as in any mystery novel – she asks questions, she peeps, she spies and she sifts information. She studies people and, like many of us, seeks to understand them by looking at their furniture, their rooms, and their homes. This is a technique often used by women (I fear I’ll be accused of being politically incorrect, as well as generalising, but hope you will see my point) and one that reveals more about a character than direct questioning would elicit.

This brings us back to Kinsey, her own home, her possessions, and her habits, which go towards explaining, even if we don’t yet understand, her emotional make-up. She grew up in mobile homes – bastions of tiny space (which she tends to prefer) – and now lives in a small apartment. She owns one dress, her usual attire being turtleneck sweaters, jeans and blazer. She usually cuts her own hair are rarely wears make-up. She runs every day and the beach, along with other aspects of her surroundings, feature, collage-like, in her ruminations as she sifts through the clues, or lack of them in her current case.

"M is for Malice" then is more than your usual crime novel. It can be read as a stand-alone piece of work or as part of a whole that encompasses the growth of a woman searching for something as yet undefined. I would recommend it on both counts.