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Katharine Weber

Författare till Triangle

10+ verk 1,279 medlemmar 72 recensioner 2 favoritmärkta

Om författaren

Katharine Weber is the author of the novels True Confections, Triangle, The Little Women, The Music Lesson, and Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, the cultural historian Nicholas Fox Weber.

Inkluderar namnet: Katharine Weber

Foto taget av: Katharine Weber.

Verk av Katharine Weber

Triangle (2006) 386 exemplar
The Music Lesson (1998) 337 exemplar
True Confections (2009) 194 exemplar
The Little Women (2003) 136 exemplar
Still Life with Monkey (2018) 28 exemplar
Objets dans le miroir (1999) 1 exemplar

Associerade verk

Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave (2007) — Bidragsgivare — 64 exemplar
Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes (2006) — Bidragsgivare — 51 exemplar
It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters (2006) — Bidragsgivare — 37 exemplar
A Few Thousand Words About Love (1998) — Bidragsgivare — 22 exemplar

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An accomplished architect, Duncan is driving home from a site visit when a car accident leaves him almost entirely paralyzed from the neck down. Worse, his colleague in the passenger seat, was killed. After Duncan's wife Laura hears of an experimental primate assistance program, Ottoline, a female capuchin monkey, is welcomed into their home and trained to help Duncan with simple tasks when Laura and other caregivers are not present. Despite Ottoline's presence, Laura's support and the many fancy pieces of technology designed to make his new circumstances easier which have been added to their home, Duncan's bleak future makes each day a mental struggle for him.

Though it took a few chapters for me to really get into the story, I was thereafter totally engrossed. The story alternates between scenes from the present, events leading up to the accident and vignettes from both Duncan's and Laura's pasts, providing insight on their lives and personalities. Ottoline (I really wanted to know the correct way to pronounce her name — folks on the internet are of several opinions) and her big personality and antics are only a small fraction of narrative but her presence helps tie together the dual timelines. Weber's writing touches with sensitivity on all kinds of topics, from disability and infertility to guilt and hopelessness. I learned about all kinds new concepts in architecture, medicine, and art conservation. Weber must either be incredibly knowledgeable or have done extensive research. Her writing is really stellar, both authentic and perceptive. I'm frankly confused by how this book hasn't received more recognition. It's a sleeper hit for sure. Highly recommended.
… (mer)
 
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ryner | 3 andra recensioner | Feb 23, 2024 |
The Triangle shirtwaist fire and a musician of genetics. Memory and loss and identity. It's wonderful.
 
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jennybeast | 18 andra recensioner | Apr 14, 2022 |
This was a terrific collection. The stories vary in length from almost-novella to almost-flash, which makes for a very propulsive, energetic quality. They're all very smart and very interior, with very subtle links to each other here and there—blink and you might miss them. Also something I like as an admitted magpie person, a thread throughout of the power of objects over us all. Recommended!
½
 
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lisapeet | Jan 26, 2022 |
The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire with its eerie resonances to 9/11 and a recent documentary to mark its anniversary, is well-known in New York. But I had never heard of it until it was mentioned in a course about Yiddish Women writers that I took through the Melbourne Jewish Museum. One of the stories we read referenced Jewish girls migrating from the shtetl to work in the garment factories of New York.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood of Manhattan, New York City, on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers – 123 women and girls and 23 men – who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Italian or Jewish immigrant women and girls aged 14 to 23; of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was 43-year-old Providenza Panno, and the youngest were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and Rosaria "Sara" Maltese.

The factory was located on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the Asch Building, at 23–29 Washington Place, near Washington Square Park. The 1901 building still stands today and is now known as the Brown Building. It is part of and owned by New York University.

Because the doors to the stairwells and exits were locked—a common practice at the time to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft—many of the workers could not escape from the burning building and jumped from the high windows. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.

The building has been designated a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark. (Wikipedia, viewed 31/7/21, lightly edited to remove superfluous links and footnotes)

Although based on this real-life historical event, Triangle is not an historical novel nor (despite its back-cover blurb) a 'mystery', (which might account for some of the disappointment seen in Goodreads reviews). It is an exploration of truth, a satire of dour, misdirected feminism, and an homage to the dead.

The book begins with a poem called 'Shirt', followed by the fictional Esther's account of the fire, 'transcribed' from her recollections for a 1961 commemorative booklet. It is is vivid, and horrifying: the sudden explosion, the rapid spread of fire across the overcrowded room, the smell and the smoke and the girls trapped by their long skirts as they tried to crawl under the tables to the door, which could not be opened. The firemen's ladders were too short to reach the ninth floor, and the net with which they tried to catch the girls who jumped from the windows wasn't strong enough. Esther, who remembered another door that the girls were never supposed to use, escaped upstairs and across a perilous ladder to an adjacent building.
I had to sit down on the curb, I was weak, and there was blood running past me over my shoes, it was water from the fire hoses mixed with blood, it was like a river of blood running past me, it was so terrible, and I just sat there letting it run over my shoes and I couldn't even open my mouth anymore like I forgot how to talk English and I just watched. Everywhere on the street there was money. Coins from everyone's pockets, because it was payday and so in their pockets and their stockings they had their money, and it fell out from the pay packets or wherever they were carrying it, and it was all over the street. They told us before we came here, in America the streets are paved with gold, and this day it was true, but so terrible, to see this money in the gutter. For what did they work so hard, but to have this money? (p.12)

Chapter Two, however, brings the reader to the present day. We read about the eccentric genius George Botkin, who composes music which translates molecular structures such as DNA into melodies. George is the long-term boyfriend of Esther's granddaughter Rebecca and he sits and sings with her as Esther comes to the end of her very long life in a nursing home. Rebecca and George are very fond of each other but what holds them back from marriage is George's genetic heritage of Huntingdon's Disease, the consequences of which they know only too well because of Rebecca's counselling work in clinical genetics. The strength of their relationship, however, is what enables them to deal with Ruth Zion, a feminist academic who is determined to shoehorn Esther's horrific experience into her own agenda.

Chapters Four and Seven are 'transcripts' of Ruth's interviews with Esther, fossicking around the inconsistencies in Esther's story. Esther gets quite testy with Ruth, and from her conversations and behaviour with Rebecca, we can see why. Author of "Gendered Space in the Workplace, Past, Present and Future" and her forthcoming 812-page 'Out of the Frying pan: Women and Children last' Ruth is insensitive, bombastic, unprincipled, long-winded and often laugh-out-loud funny though that is not what she intends.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/08/01/triangle-by-katharine-weber/
… (mer)
 
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anzlitlovers | 18 andra recensioner | Jul 31, 2021 |

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Statistik

Verk
10
Även av
5
Medlemmar
1,279
Popularitet
#20,044
Betyg
½ 3.5
Recensioner
72
ISBN
38
Språk
5
Favoritmärkt
2

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