Triangle: A Novel [Hardcover]

Katharine Weber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 13, 2006

Esther Gottesfeld is the last living survivor of the notorious 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire and has told her story countless times in the span of her lifetime. Even so, her death at the age of 106 leaves unanswered many questions about what happened that fateful day. How did she manage to survive the fire when at least 146 workers, most of them women, her sister and fiancé among them, burned or jumped to their deaths from the sweatshop inferno? Are the discrepancies in her various accounts over the years just ordinary human fallacy, or is there a hidden story in Esther’s recollections of that terrible day?

 

Esther’s granddaughter Rebecca Gottesfeld, with her partner George Botkin, an ingenious composer, seek to unravel the facts of the matter while Ruth Zion, a zealous feminist historian of the fire, bores in on them with her own mole-like agenda. A brilliant, haunting novel about one of the most terrible tragedies in early-twentieth-century America, Triangle forces us to consider how we tell our stories, how we hear them, and how history is forged from unverifiable truths.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 workers, most of them women, and galvanized efforts to reform working conditions in sweatshops. In Esther Gottesfeld, the last remaining survivor of the Triangle fire, Weber (The Little Women) creates a believable and memorable witness to the horrors of that day. Esther managed to escape, but her fiancé, Sam, and her sister, Pauline, both perished in the blaze. In 2001, Esther is living in a New York Jewish retirement home, visited often by her beloved granddaughter Rebecca and Rebecca's longtime partner, George Botkin. Rebecca and George's story and quirky rapport take up half of the book, and descriptions of George's music provide a needed counterpoint to the harrowing accounts of the fire and its aftermath. But Ruth Zion, a humorless but perceptive feminist scholar, sees inconsistencies in Esther's story and determines to ferret them out through repeated interviews with Esther and, after her death, with Rebecca. The novel carefully, and wrenchingly, allows both the reader and Rebecca to discover the secret truth about Esther and the Triangle without spelling it out; it is a truth that brings home the real sufferings of factory life as well as the human capacity to tell the stories we want to hear. (June)
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From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–The 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City killed almost 150 people. Weber blends that fact with an interesting and believable fictional premise in this novel about Esther Gottesfeld, the oldest living survivor of the disaster. How did she survive while her fiancé and twin sister, Pauline, perished? Esther's granddaughter, Rebecca, and Rebecca's partner, George, are caught in the middle of a battle of wills as Ruth Zion, a Triangle historian, shows a dogged determination to uncover the truth about that fatal day that sends her beyond investigative journalism into obsession. George is a renowned composer whose works are based on science, like the molecular sequences of an individual's DNA. Triangle is a series of complex, multilayered, triangular connections with links as tight as the threads in a shirt–Esther, Pauline, and the fiancé; Esther, Rebecca, and George; Rebecca, George, and Ruth–the permutations go on and on. Branching off into music theory and chemistry, this is a challenging and somewhat esoteric read that should appeal to mathematically and scientifically inclined teens as well as those who enjoy the mystery of the human heart and its relationships.–Charli Osborne, Oxford Public Library, MI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (June 13, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374281424
• ISBN-13: 978-0374281427
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #984,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Katharine Weber's five highly-praised and award-winning novels have made her a book club favorite. Her sixth book, a memoir called The Memory of All That: George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and My Family's Legacy of Infidelities, was published by Crown in July 2011 and has already won raves from the critics, from Ben Brantley in the New York Times ("Ms. Weber is able to arrange words musically, so that they capture the elusive, unfinished melodies that haunt our memoires of childhood") to the Dallas Morning News ("gracefully written, poignant and droll"), the NY Daily News ("Old Scandals, what fun...the core of her tale is that of elegant sin and betrayal"), and the Boston Globe (a masterful memoir of the private world of a very public family"), among others.

Her most recent novel, True Confections, the story of a chocolate candy factory in crisis, was published in January 2010 by Shaye Areheart Books and was published in December 2010 in paperback by Broadway Books. Critics raved: "A great American tale" (New York Times Book Review), "Marvelous, a vividly imagined story about love, obsession and betrayal" (Boston Globe), "Katharine Weber is one of the wittiest, most stimulating novelists at work today...wonderful fun and endlessly provocative" (Chicago Tribune),"Succulently inventive" (Washington Post),"Her most delectable novel yet" (L.A. Times).

Katharine's fiction debut in print, the short story "Friend of the Family," appeared in The New Yorker in January, 1993. Her first novel, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear (of which that story was a chapter), was published by Crown Publishers, Inc. in 1995 and was published in paperback by Picador in 1996. It will be published in a new paperback edition by Broadway Books in Summer, 2011.

She was named by Granta to the controversial list of 50 Best Young American Novelists in 1996.

Her second novel, The Music Lesson, was published by Crown Publishers, Inc. in 1999, and was published in paperback by Picador in 2000. The Music Lesson has been published in twelve foreign languages, and is being reissued in the U.S. by Broadway Books in January, 2011.

The Little Women was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2003 and by Picador in 2004. All three novels were named Notable Books by The New York Times Book Review.

Her fourth novel, Triangle, which takes up the notorious Triangle Waist company factory fire of 1911, was published in 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and in 2007 by Picador.

Katharine's maternal grandmother was the songwriter Kay Swift. Since Swift's death in 1993, Katharine has been a Trustee and the Administrator of the Kay Swift Memorial Trust, which is dedicated to preserving and promoting the music of Kay Swift. This work includes the first Broadway musical with a score by a woman, "Fine and Dandy," and several popular show tunes of the era, among them "Fine and Dandy" and "Can't We Be Friends?" (www.kayswift.com)

Katharine is on the staff at Star, a foundation dedicated to offering personal growth retreats in the Arizona desert. (www.starfound.org)


Katharine has taught fiction writing at Connecticut College, Yale University (for eight years), and the Paris Writers Workshop. She was the Kratz Writer in Residence at Goucher College in Spring 2006. Katharine is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor in the graduate writing program in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.

Katharine is married to the cultural historian Nicholas Fox Weber (author most recently of The Bauhaus Group), and they have two daughters.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and original , despite major character flaw., July 23, 2006

By 

Roni Jordan (Hanover, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Triangle: A Novel (Hardcover)

Creating a fascinating counterpoint between the infamous tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and the world of genetic studies and music, Katharine Weber had me enthralled from the words "This is what happened." Even when she departs from 106-year-old Esther's recollections of the fire to discuss the evolution of George's musical genius, she does so easily and with the ability to hold this reader in her grip. The subject matter is never less than intriguing, often mesmerizing. George, Rebecca, and Esther feel like true, living people I would want to know. Unfortunately, in the character of Ruth Zion, the feminist herstorian, Weber has crafted someone so abrasive, so annoying and utterly insensitive that she is more a caricature than a believable character. This was a huge letdown in comparison to the more humanly drawn central figures. Nevertheless, this is one of the better reads I've enjoyed this summer. The ending, though not the total surprise some have suggested, is heartbreakingly written, with just a touch of ambiguity to leave me a bit puzzled about the other triangle, the love triangle of Esther, Jacob and Pauline.

23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "There were bodies falling everywhere.", June 13, 2006

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Triangle: A Novel (Hardcover)

Weber weaves an esoteric musical theme through her novel of the last survivor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory tragedy of 1911, the improbable romance of two unusual people, composer George Botkin and geneticist Rebecca Gottesfeld. George's music explores "all sorts of formations found in nature for their musical possibilities, especially genetic codes and cell structures." His long-time paramour, Rebecca, is the granddaughter of Esther Gottesfeld, now one-hundred-six-years old and dying of natural causes, the last human archive of one of the most shocking exposes in the garment industry of the early 1900's. Esther's world is clouded with the painful images of the fire that took the lives of 146 people, including her fiancé and sister, Pauline, leaving Esther to raise her unborn child without the comfort of family. When Esther's son and his wife are killed in an automobile accident, it is she who raises Rebecca, her darling granddaughter.

Esther's narrow escape from the Triangle fire is told through a series of court documents and personal interviews with Ruth Zion, a woman's rights advocate, compiling what she believes will be the definitive "herstory" of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the patriarchy that allowed it to happen. Ruth fails to penetrate Esther's painful secrets, knowledge the old woman has kept to herself for all the years of her long life. Hoping to uncover discrepancies in Esther's account of the fire, Ruth interviews Esther as often as circumstances permit, repeating the same questions over and over, but the wily old woman remains vigilant, sensing the ill-intentions of the researcher. After Esther's death, Ruth hopes to find more fertile ground in her granddaughter in Rebecca, who is grieving Esther's loss when first she meets the intrusive and insensitive Ruth Zion, clearly a woman with an agenda of her own.

Esther's account of the fire is harrowing: the helpless terror of women trapped in a burning building, blindly heaving themselves from the windows to avoid the flames, the cotton garments they have sewn fueling the pyre. That Esther escapes at all is exceptional, her actions driven by instinct. Esther dies a few days prior to 9/11, adding a subtle tension to Rebecca and Ruth's unfolding drama, the images of bodies falling to their deaths now embedded in the national consciousness of a more recent horror. The author skillfully manages the historical perspective with an unusual love story, Esther's survival a testament to the extraordinary spirit of the immigrants who fled a hostile Europe for the opportunities of a new country. Luan Gaines/ 2006.

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars just okay, July 15, 2006

By 

Errin (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Triangle: A Novel (Hardcover)

having done extensive research on the triangle shirtwaist factory fire, i was very interested to read this novel. the main plot was riveting, but the subplot dealing with the composer boyfriend was irritating. at the beginning of the book, twentyish pages are devoted to a drawn out and boring description of his genius. the language is excessively technical, and the whole of it seems unnecessary to the rest of the novel. the story provokes many questions about the nature of academic research and the reliability of oral histories, but overall it fell sort of flat.