Katharine WeberRecensioni

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.

The Triangle shirtwaist fire and a musician of genetics. Memory and loss and identity. It's wonderful.

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

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/

2.5 stars

Esther was working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York in 1911 when it burnt down. Her sister and fiancee both died in the fire, but she managed to get out. She was pregnant at the time. In current day, she is 106-years old. A historian, Ruth, has been interviewing her to find out more about the fire. When Esther passes away, Ruth contacts Esther’s granddaughter, Rebecca, to find out how much she knew.

I didn’t find any of the characters likable. The whole music thing with Rebecca’s husband was boring – way too much detail on that, and it really didn’t seem necessary. The info about the fire itself was interesting, but retold a few times in a few different way (interviews, trial transcripts, etc). The very end confused me a little; I may have it figured out, but I’m not positive. The current-day storyline was definitely not one I was interested in, though of course, the fire itself (even if I didn’t like the way it was told), was the best part of the book.½

I was intrigued by the clever title as it refers to a helper monkey, a tufted capuchin named Ottoline who is trained to help a 37-year-old paraplegic man. Duncan Wheeler is a successful architect who was severely injured in a car accident which killed his young assistant. This isn't my usual reading fare. As I read more of the new lifestyle that architect Duncan Wheeler must adjust to, I kept asking myself if I was enjoying the book and if I was really going to finish it. But, in spite of the very nuts-and-bolts details of living in a wheelchair as a C-6 spinal cord injury victim, I continued to read. Yes, it got intense, but not graphic. What kept me engaged was the excellent writing and the realistic three-dimensional characters. Author Katherine Weber skillfully described not only Duncan's state of mind and his life both before and after the accident, but she explored the thoughts, hopes, and sense of humor of his wife Laura as well as Duncan's twin brother Gordon. These three characters were so honestly and vividly portrayed that at times I had to remind myself it was a novel and not a true story.

So what about Ottoline, the adorable little monkey? Every time she is in the story, she steals the limelight. The concept of a helper monkey is fascinating to me, and this little furry girl has such personality! Plus she is adorable, comical, and sweet.

This is a thought-provoking novel, and one that I will remember for quite a while. As the book cover notes, "Still Life With Monkey, full of tenderness and melancholy, explores the conflict between the will to live and the desire to die."

I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

STILL LIFE WITH MONKEY may not be what you expect. But it is such a lovely novel I give it my highest rating, and I seldom do that.

The story opens with Duncan, a quadriplegic architect in his 30s, after he is first introduced to Ottoline, a small helper monkey. You may expect, then, that STILL LIFE WITH MONKEY continues the story of “life with monkey.” Yes and no.

STILL LIFE WITH MONKEY is a character-driven novel that studies Duncan and the people closest to him, his wife, Laura, and his twin brother, Gordon. Ottoline is part of the story, but she’s not the story.

Katharine Weber makes her characters seem so real because, as she says, she uses “real-world information,” including architecture, art conservation, Sears kit houses, infertility, quadriplegia, monkey helpers, the right to die, twins, and Chinese porcelains. And she makes it interesting as you learn more and more about Duncan, Laura, and Gordon.

Author Ann Packer says that this book is “a meditation on the question of what makes life worth living.” Maybe, but I understood the opposite: what makes life worth dying.

I love this book and wish I read Katharine Weber sooner.

This story of a couple—Duncan and Laura Wheeler, an architect paralyzed in an accident and his wife—is funny and smart and sad in equal measures. Weber gets at the shifts and dynamics between the two, the ill and the healthy spouse with an entire marriage's complications already packed into their otherwise smoothly run lives, and paints a sympathetic but not sentimental portrait, sometimes harsh but always believable. The monkey in question is Ottoline, a tufted capuchin "monkey helper" engaged to help Duncan with small tasks, but also a sharply drawn little character in her own right. This is all about relationships: Duncan and Laura, Duncan and his sweet oddball brother Gordon, the Wheelers and Ottoline, and—in stark highlight—Duncan's relationship to his once-comfortable life and his new limitations, the true heartbreaker of the novel. Weber's observations, small and large, are engaging and spot-on, and even Ottoline is given a believable interiority. Good, subtle, smart stuff.½

Dishy but poignant and more than a little bittersweet.

Sharp, dark, and funny w/ an enigmatic, opinionated, and cranky narrator who rivals Charles Kinbote for sheer unreliability. Much fun.

The Memory of All That: George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and My Family's Legacy of Infidelities by Katharine Weber is a family memoir. Weber is the granddaughter of Broadway composer Kay Swift, who was married to banker James Warburg. She had a affair with George Gershwin for ten years. Her mother, Andrea Warburg, married Sidney Kaufman, who was notoriously unfaithful to her. The FBI also kept extensive files on Kaufman. Weber describes her very dysfunctional family, and along the way name-drops a whole host of characters who passed in and out of their lives.

Initially, the title of the book seemed a bit misleading. It really feels like most of the book concerns Weber's parents, especially the poor relationship she had with her father. In fact, I would have to admit that The Memory of All That would have failed the 50 page rule (if you aren't enjoying it by page 50, it is not worth your time) except for I wanted to get to the information about Kay Swift and George Gershwin. I could have done with less disgruntled information about her father. Once she actually gets past her disappointing father and on to other relatives, The Memory of All That does become more interesting.

Although this seems like a negative review, what saves the book from failure is Weber's writing ability. At times Weber is funny, enlightening, informative, and entertaining. Ultimately, all things considered, this is an uneven memoir. A good half of the book details Weber's parents and their failures as parents and in their relationships. If you can get through the first half and onto the rest of her family history and included anecdotes, it becomes more interesting. I can't help but think that this is a memoir that would have benefited from some reorganization in the presentation.

Recommended if you are a Gershwin or Kay Swift fan: http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/

Disclosure: I received this novel through the Goodreads First Reads program

Odd, disjointed and chaotic - not unlike a fire. The exposition on math and music is distracting. Not really recommended.

This is not the book by Louisa May Alcott.

"The Music Lesson" by Katharine Weber is a small, beautifully written novel. It is staged around a mad love affair between Patricia Dolan, an Art Reference Librarian in NYC, and an Irish cousin in need of her particular expertise.

I've just about hit my limit on depressing literary novels written by and/or about the Irish. My daughter has also recommended Colm Toibin and Colum McCann.

I should really read something else by Katherine Weber, because the very end of this book (dealing with the end of her Grandmother's life) was really lovely, and I caught I glimpse of Weber's skill with words. But mostly I didn't like this book. Weber's childhood was hard. The first half focuses on her father who was unfaithful, as the book's title suggests, but also just a crappy father and husband (and crazy/delusional/narcissistic). It's hard to read. The second half, focused on her grandmother (she of the long-running affair with George Gershwin) is more interesting, and her grandmother was an impressively accomplished woman. I would have preferred a book focused just on that, but perhaps Weber felt she couldn't tell one story without the other.

A funny, edgy book. The narrator, Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky, is so perfectly off-kilter -- she's both sympathetic and disconcerting, often at the same time -- that she lends a slightly funhouse feeling to the story's telling. This dynastic epic of a candy-making family encompasses immigration, assimilation, success, failure, racism, inclusion, and everything you ever wanted to know about the candy business, all skillfully interwoven. And Alice's weird, funny, almost-perfectly-reasonable voice is the perfect medium. You pay attention, because Alice is the kind of narrator you want to keep an eye on, and in the process the story unwinds vividly. This is a smart novel, out of the ordinary and fun -- recommended whether you have a sweet tooth or not (although that's definitely an asset).½

Unfocused and repetitive. The author could not decide what story to tell: George the composer's or Esther the fire survivor's. So she mashed them up into one incohesive mess. And then it seems like she realized that she didn't have enough of Esther's story to fill the book, so she just told it over and over again. Very disappointing, given what could have been a riveting topic for a novel.

[The Music Lesson] by [[Katherine Weber]] is a charming little novel about Patricia Dolan a middle-aged American of Irish descent who is staying in a cottage in West Cork for reasons which aren't apparent to begin with. As the story unfolds we learn more about Patricia and about the dangerous world she has gotten herself involved with.½

Good fiction about a historical tragedy. I could never really tell whether the parallel story of George's musical compositions was supposed to lighten up the somber subject at hand, or whether we were supposed to take it seriously. I enjoyed the story but did feel that the author could have deleted at least one or two of the interviews.

A really interesting hybrid of memoir and good family dish, very bittersweet and often funny. It works on many levels, but a certain tenderness comes through always, and I found the book not only wry and gossipy and smart but ultimately really touching. Families are all odd when you pull back and look at them, and I very much enjoyed this glimpse into a very complex and vibrant set of family dynamics. Well done.

Knowing nothing about Kay Swift and only the bare minimum about George Gershwin, this book was quite informative for me. However, I had a tough time trying to keep up with the other assorted family members of the author. It was strange that she would write at first about her father and then eventually make it back to Kay Swift and George Gershwin. My husband, who grew up in NYC and knows a lot more about these people also found that strange. Somehow it seems backwards

This was a very good book about people and their stories. The ones they tell, and the ones told about them. I liked Esther's interactions with the interviewer as well as her granddaughter's friend George Bostwick composing music based on DNA.

This book was a challenge and a chore to finish. I typically enjoy memoirs, but this seemed a dramatization of family dysfunction and less about the relationship between Gershwin and Swift. Additionally, the writing style was disjointed and the name-dropping was tedious. Should a reader in the 21st century know social figures of the 20's, 30's & 40's? Even the title falls into pretentious name-dropping, as George Gershwin is a minor character in the overall memoir.

This book wasn't my favorite but it was ok. It tells an interesting story about a truly fascinating family and all their dysfunctions but there are so many references to different people that the reader gets lost in the who's who.

I would have enjoyed this book more if there wasn't so many people mentioned and there was more written about the main characters.

This was a librarything giveaway. Katharine Weber does a good job putting together the story of her eccentric, influential, and complicated family. I had trouble keeping the family tree and all of their social connections straight, and often referred to her illustrated tree in the beginning, so had to take some breaks from it, but did end up liking it quite well. But what a life! She is careful in her telling of the infidelites, intrigues and wonderful talents of these relatives, and how this woman managed to grow into a stable person in a monogomous marriage is pretty amazing.