Saint Mazie

by Jami Attenberg

Tavia Gilbert (Narrator)

Meet Mazie Phillips: big-hearted and feisty, she runs The Venice, the famed movie theatre in the rundown Bowery district of New York City. She spends her days taking tickets, chatting with drunks and eccentrics, and chasing out the troublemakers. After closing up, the nights are her own, and she fills them with romance and booze aplenty - even during Prohibition.

When the Great Depression hits, and homelessness soars, Mazie opens The Venice to those in need, giving them shelter and dimes for food and booze, and earning the nickname 'Saint Mazie'. Inspired by Joseph Mitchell's essay about Mazie in Up in the Old Hotel, acclaimed author Jami Attenberg's novel honours an extraordinary life and heralds a completely original approach to writing historical fiction.

Weaving together fictionalised diaries, writings and interviews, Attenberg has constructed an utterly convincing portrait of Mazie Philips, which is also a deeply moving portrait of New York as it passed through the First World War, Prohibition, the boom of the '20s, and then the terrible depression of the '30s.

• ISBN10: 1478933445
• ISBN13: 9781478933441
• Publish Date: 2 June 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Grand Central Publishing
• Edition: Library Edition
• Format: Audiobook (CD)
• Duration: 9 hours and 38 minutes
• Language: English

Reviews

[readingwithwrin]

“We all lose sometimes. Life’s plenty easy when you’re winning. It’s what you do when you’re down. That’s the real test.”

When I started this book I was really looking forward to hearing about how Mazie helped so many people out and what had made her want to help so many people in the first place. When we do finally get to this part it is extremely interesting to me especially how she made friends with a certain person and really learned how to truly help people in a good way.. The majority of this story is about Mazie's family and how she interacted with them. This is an extremely important part of who Mazie is and why she is the way she is. At times though I did want her to help out her sister more though and realize that she needed help with certain things.

Attenberg did an amazing job of making you see New York throughout the 1920 - 1940 and made you feel like you really could imagine being there while you were reading.

Since this is a fictionalized biography of sorts there is a lot of blank spaces and a lot of things that never get touched on except for briefly making you feel slightly disconnected at times.

“there’s just so many goddamn things we never get to know. We’re not entitled to all the truth.”

See more reviews like this on my blog