content: The premise sounded interesting: following the accordian through a series of owners from all walks of life. But the characters were extremely uninteresting. I didn't mind the book's darkness, as other reviewers did, because I really didn't care at all what happened to any of the characters, tragic or otherwise. But it's not enough that it's boring... Proulx' writing style is so frustrating. One paragraph might be a single sentence, going on and on, through myriad descriptive phrases, punctuated with endless commas, so that, by the end of the sentence, you have completely lost the point. Then the next paragaph is a collection of short thoughts. Single phrases. Broken into sentences. I was so distracted by the run-on sentences and the dramatic stylistic shifts, that what little empathy I might have mustered for any of the characters was totally lost.