Critical Essay | Critical Review by Bharati Mukherjee

Critical Review by Bharati Mukherjee

SOURCE: Mukherjee, Bharati. “Passage to America: E. Annie Proulx's Audacious Look at the Lives of Immigrants and an Accordion.” Chicago Tribune Books (9 June 1996): 1.

In the following review, Mukherjee praises Accordion Crimes, calling the work Proulx's “most audacious to date.”

I fell under E. Annie Proulx's storytelling spell some six or seven years ago when I chanced on Heart Songs and read all 11 stories in the collection at one sitting. Proulx's language sparkled, her vision stung. Although I shared nothing in terms of ethnicity and upbringing with the New England characters, I found myself in profound empathy with their harsh hungers and demonic hopes. I still wonder why that brilliant first book didn't win Proulx literary prizes.

Since then she has, of course, written two acclaimed novels, Postcards and The Shipping News, and won all the major honors, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Pulitzer Prize and the...
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