Invented truths

KATHARINE WEBER’S fourth novel, “Triangle,” fits comfortably within the trajectory of an intriguing literary career. From her debut, “Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear,” through her metafictional riff on Louisa May Alcott in “The Little Women,” Weber has warned us that reality is not always what it seems and that narrators are not necessarily to be trusted.

With “Triangle,” she takes an unabashedly witty, boldly postmodern approach to an iconic American tragedy -- the ghastly fire that killed 146 workers, most of them young immigrant women, at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in Lower Manhattan on March 25, 1911. Even the opening chapter, which describes that terrible day in the words of Esther Gottesfeld, a fictional survivor of the disaster, conveys artful hints that these recollections contain errors and omissions. Such hints will be amplified in three interviews with Esther conducted by feminist historian Ruth Zion -- also an invented character -- as well as in a more contemporary story that takes place in the fall of 2001 in a completely different milieu: the rarified world of a composer named George Botkin.

George dreams of developing a composition from Sierpinski triangles, which appeal to him because “[t]hey weren’t all the rage like Finobacci numbers.” He has already written a string quartet called “Parturition,” which is based on “the progression of natural labor contractions as compared with the artificial contractions of labor induced by the drug Pitocin.” Weber invites our discomfort by offering up this gently humorous portrait of a trendy modern artist directly on the heels of Esther’s terrifying images of girls on fire jumping out of windows, the coins from their pitiful pay packets scattered on the street around their shattered bodies. She increases our unease when she introduces Rebecca, Esther’s granddaughter and George’s longtime lover, who bears the news that her 106-year-old grandmother is dying.

Rebecca is an appealing woman: calm and steady, a counselor in the clinical genetics department at the Yale School of Medicine. Often, she has to deliver dreadful news about gruesome inherited defects to her patients, remaining sympathetic without presuming to share their grief. George is one of those patients; his mother died of Huntington’s disease and the latest DNA testing puts him “in that dreadful range called ‘indeterminate.’ He might get Huntington’s, and he might not.”

George’s quiet forbearance gives depth to his charmingly eccentric quirks, and the couple’s love for each other is palpable. Yet it strikes a disquieting note when they follow a brief discussion of Esther’s terminal condition with elaborate banter: “I love your voice, even when it’s got a Brahmsian sadness,” says George. “Oh, please. A Brahmsian sadness?” Rebecca rejoins. “[N]ow you’re verging on the self-parodic.” Readers may well wonder how a modern comedy of manners can be yoked to a 95-year-old disaster without the result seeming artificial or offensive, or both.

Weber persuades us to go along with her by sheer storytelling ability. On one level, “Triangle” is a mystery. Esther’s fiance and her younger sister both died in the Triangle fire. Why didn’t she lead them to the unlocked door through which she saved herself and her unborn child? Her testimony at the trial of the Triangle factory owners led to their acquittal: Was she paid $20,000 for it? Why would she take money from men she blamed for the unsafe conditions that led to so many deaths? Why did she contradict herself over small details in the multiple interviews she gave about the fire? What happened to the little girls working in the factory whose bodies were never found? Is there some significance to the fact that Esther’s son, Rebecca’s father, died with his wife in a car crash the day after the 50th anniversary of the tragedy?

It’s Ruth Zion who points out these contradictions and asks uncomfortable questions, some of which are never answered. She drives the plot forward with her endless interviews with Esther -- a bit too true to life in their tedium and repetitiousness -- as well as her conversations with Rebecca. Ruth is one of the book’s best characters. At first, she’s entirely unlikable, a humorless and pompous scholar. After Esther’s obituary appears, on Sept. 19, 2001 (she died on Sept. 7, but the notice was delayed, for obvious reasons), Ruth phones to offer her tin-eared condolences. “What a funny little coincidence,” she remarks, “that your grandmother should die just before the tragedy that could have triggered some valuable memories of her own tragic experience.” Not even the World Trade Center attack can deflect Ruth’s blinkered gaze from her research project.

Weber makes Ruth bear the reader’s scorn for flat-footedly linking Sept. 11 to the Triangle fire. Yet she also seizes the opportunity to warm up her highly intellectual protagonists by allowing Rebecca and George to express a more sensitive understanding of the existential connections between the two calamities. It’s a clever tactic, if slightly unfair to her supporting character; she atones for it by letting us see Ruth’s peculiar vulnerability, her lurking awareness of the bad impression she makes. Ruth may be didactic, but she’s not dumb: She unerringly puts her finger on every issue raised by the Triangle fire, reminding us in her clumsy way that this is a story about the shameless exploitation of women and children, about the law’s inability to hold powerful men accountable for their crimes.

That is not, however, the entire story told in “Triangle.” Alert readers will discern the central secret underlying Esther’s prevarications long before George figures it out, and I think the author intends them to. Weber’s primary concern is not what Esther did but how she lived with it. Rebecca and George, we come to realize, have adopted their own methods of dealing with sorrow and fear, and their mannerisms drop away as they delve deeper into Esther’s past.

In art, the closing chapters suggest, we find the fullest exploration of life’s cataclysmic, transformative experiences, as well as the strength to endure them. The description of George’s “Triangle Oratorio” makes the case for this, although even a writer as gifted as Weber can’t quite make words do the work of music. But there’s no need, as she elegantly glides into her own verbal music with one final rendition of Esther’s memories of March 25, 1911 -- two, actually, as the dying woman remembers what really happened and then offers her own vision of what she desperately, all her long life, wished had happened instead.