CarlZen has started a great thread here. As he said, his Accordion Crimes opinion is his own and he's welcome to it. IMHO Ms. Proulx's use of music has been one of the elements that make the depressing threads that run through her novels bearable. There's a great series of personal stories that run out of the accordion playing of Quoyle's Sig-o in The Shipping News. There's a wonderfully drawn guitar player in Heartsongs. Music is the pulse of her novels. Her stories are grim, but they are funny, ironic uplifting, subtle, obvious, insightful. They work on so many levels at once, that I can't get enough. I just love the way she crafts sentences. The first 100 pages or so of The Shipping News was some of the most difficult reading I've done in many years, but I'm sure glad I pushed through. Skivee