Saint Mazie (Attenberg) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Full of love and drink and dirty sex and nobility.... Attenberg takes Mitchell's witty, colorful piece and spins it into something equally lively and new.
New York Times Book Review


[F]resh and witty.... Saint Mazie looks deep into the spirit of generosity. Jami Attenberg's Mazie lives a very big life in a very small space, turning her darkest experiences into something inspiring.
Wall Street Journal


Attenberg is a nimble and inventive storyteller with a particular knack for getting at the heart of outsized characters.... [she] proves her chops as a historical novelist by perfectly capturing Mazie's jazz-age voice, which ranges from clipped and vulgar to melancholy and lyrical. Attenberg also sidesteps many of the pitfalls of the form: no day-by-day plodding through the decades, no unedited research notes masquerading as dialogue. She resists any plot twist or final revelation to provide a tidy psychological explanation for Mazie Phillips-Gordon sainthood.
Washington Post


Delightful . . . [an] often ebullient tale about the simple pleasures of a working life.... Thanks to the wonderful Jami Attenberg (with an assist from the legendary Joseph Mitchell) Mazie does live on, an actual 20th century New York City saint.
NPR


Attenberg captures Mazie's voice so vividly you can close the book and still hear her talking. She is a tremendous achievement.... [A] bold, magnificent book about family, altruism, women and freedom, as well as a love letter to New York and a timely social manifesto for the 21st century.
Guardian (UK)


Attenberg's style, at turns lyrical and blunt, is a strong match for Mazie.... This voice-pleasantly tinged with jazz age argot, refreshingly modern in its honesty, and always intimate-is Attenberg's great achievement in Saint Mazie.... [A] boisterous, deep, provocative book.
Boston Globe


The real-life Mazie first appeared in a 1940 New Yorker profile by Joseph Mitchell and later again in his seminal collection, Up in the Old Hotel. Now Mazie's latest, and perhaps more powerful incarnation, is in the novel Saint Mazie by Jami Attenberg. Here Mazie continues to grab the lapels and hearts of readers—and we are all the more glad for the shake-up she gives us.... Achieves immortality in the minds and hearts of readers.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel


[I]ngeniously constructed.... An attentive character study that also happens to be rich in city lore and period detail, Saint Mazie is an edifying, companionable and moving novel.
Kansas City Star


Attenberg has an impressive ability to capture unique voices and make these characters authentic and distinctive.... [T]he voices in Saint Mazie ring out and linger, bringing to life this specific place and time in New York-and American-history.
Dallas Morning News


A winning novel and a lovely tribute to a New Yorker whose only claim to fame is her outsized kindness. Her Mazie is richly imagined and three-dimensional, and in these pages she lives forever.
Los Angeles Times


The hugely talented Jami Attenberg, most recently author of The Middlesteins, has built a novel based on an imagined diary of Mazie Phillips, a Bowery movie-theater proprietress.
New York Magazine


Tender-hearted and loose-living, Mazie is the unlikely guardian angel of New York City's Depression-Era down-and-outs. You'll love this smart, touching novel that brings her world to life.
People


Boisterous and compassionate.
O Magazine


A funny, touching novel.
Vanity Fair


An exuberant portrait of an unforgettable woman and the city she loves.
BBC.com


Impressive.... Attenberg excels at developing Mazie's voice as she grows from an impetuous, witty girl, into a shrewd-yet-selfless character. But the book is largely about the silent tragedies of womanhood, and the different forms love and loneliness can take.... What Saint Mazie is most concerned with: how to be a human being.
Bust Magazine


Mazie, the good-time girl is also a woman who cares deeply about the less fortunate, and this plays out most endearingly in her friendship with a pious nun.... [A] vivid picture of life during the Depression.
Publishers Weekly


Grand, bigmouthed, bighearted Mazie Phillips spends her days as proprietress of the Venice, an old-line New York City movie theater, and her nights on the town. Then the Depression hits, and she opens the Venice to anyone in need.
Library Journal


Early 20th-century New York and its denizens portrayed through the fictional diary of a nonfictional heroine.... Too much concept and not enough story, but Mazie might win your heart anyway with her tough-talking mensch-iness.
Kirkus Reviews