I happened across this book a few months ago when I saw an interview the author did with Judy Blume. Their latest books happened to come out on the same day and the premise of Saint Mazie intrigued me, so I went ahead and downloaded it for my kindle.
This novel by Jami Attenberg is based on Mazie Gordon who was the real life “Queen of the Bowery” in New York City in the first half of the twentieth century. She’s bold and brassy. She smokes and drinks and doesn’t care what anyone says about her (at least she pretends not to care).
Her older sister, Rosie, rescued Mazie and Jeanie from their father, who was abusive, so Mazie and Jeanie are mostly raised by Rosie, who is distraught at her inability to have children of her own. It might be for the best because she’s not the most mentally stable character.
When Jeanie runs off, Mazie is stuck trying to hold what’s left of their family together. It’s not easy, but Mazie doesn’t have anywhere else to go and she knows she can’t abandon her sister, so she stays and does what she can. She goes out drinking occasionally, but Rosie gets so upset when Mazie stays out late, that she doesn’t do it often. She does it much more early on in the book, as a teenager, than she does later.
Rosie decides Mazie should work the ticket counter at the theater her husband, Louis Gordon, owns. Mazie refers to it as her cage for the rest of the book, but she also talks about everything she sees while in that cage. She meets a nun named Sister Tee and they become best friends (which is ironic, considering Mazie is a nonpracticing Jew). Sister Tee is the first one to get Mazie started on her philanthropic pursuits. Louis makes plenty of money through various businesses, many of which Mazie and Rosie know absolutely nothing about. It is assumed they are not entirely legal. In any case, Mazie is not exactly rich, but she’s not starving either. She has money to give away and when Sister Tee asks Mazie for money, Mazie can never turn her down.
After Sister Tee and Louis die, Mazie finds herself with a very large pile of cash from Louis’s various “business partners”. She knows it’s dirty money and Rosie is throwing it away on gypsies who will con her out of everything she owns. After a few months, Mazie takes all the money Rosie hasn’t spent yet and sets up a donation for women and children who need shelter from abusive homes.
The book starts around 1917, when Mazie is just ten years old. It covers Prohibition (when no one, including Mazie, gives up drinking) and the Great Depression, when Mazie runs the theater at a loss just so they don’t have to turn out their employees. She also uses it to give the “bums” with nowhere to go someplace warm to sleep for a few hours.
The book ends when Mazie is only in her mid-thirties, but she’s been through so much she seems much older. At several points I had to stop and remind myself she was only about my age.
I loved the way the book was written. The premise is this person has been given Mazie’s diary, and having read it, she’s conducting interviews on people who knew her and people who live in the area and know something about her so she can find out anything she can about Mazie. About half of the story is told in the form of Mazie’s diary entries. Interspersed between the diary entries are excerpts of interviews with those who knew her personally or grew up hearing stories about her.
I loved Mazie, but I also loved the way the story managed to show a hint of what was going on with all these other people, even those who didn’t know Mazie. There’s a hint of something romantic going on between the man who found the diary, the person conducting the interviews, and a history teacher who’s being interviewed. Mazie’s life takes center stage, but everyone gets their shot at the limelight, including Mazie’s sister, Jeanie, who writes a couple of her own entries in Mazie’s diary.
It’s a fascinating time in our country’s history and the book makes for a quick read. I was able to get through the first quarter of it in about two hours, even with two toddlers screaming nonstop in front of and behind me.
What did you guys read this week? Any unusual finds? I want to hear all about it!
Photo credit: <a href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/cerisedelphinejankowski/16647718888/”>La Marquise de Jade</a> / <a href=”http://foter.com/”>Foter</a> / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>CC BY-SA</a>