AOL's Book Maven

I left several books off of last week's 9/11 fiction list, chief among them Jonathan Safran Foer's 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' (thanks to those who commented or emailed about that one) -- but I hadn't read Safran Foer's latest.

However, a book I did read and did neglect is 'Triangle' by Katharine Weber ('The Little Women' and 'The Music Lesson,' among others). This is one of those books that stays with you long after you've read it, in a way that I can only compare to certain movies -- for example, I recently saw 'Capote' (yes, it took me this long... I'm usually reading, remember?), and I can't stop thinking about it.

I haven't stopped thinking about 'Triangle' since I read it back in June. Weber's own grandmother worked in the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, where a 1911 fire ignited a storm of protests over the revolting labor conditions, including the locked door that led to dozens of seamstresses jumping to their deaths (the last link is to Wikipedia, which I don't always recommend -- but in this case its page of links includes some very powerful photographs from the fire and its aftermath).

Weber's protagonist is Esther Gottesfeld, at age 106 the last living survivor of the tragedy. How did she manage to survive? Are the discrepancies in her accounts of the fire, scrupulously "told" again and again in the novel, mere accidents of memory -- or something more? As her granddaughter Rebecca Gottesfeld and Rebecca's composer partner George Botkin realize, there's more to Esther's life and story than has ever met anyone's eye.

What does this have to do with 9/11? Read the Entertainment Weekly review to find out.

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