Saint Mazie by Jami Attenberg review – a love letter to Jazz Age New York

The boozing, the men, the ‘bums’ she helped on the streets … this fictional account paints a vivid picture of Manhattan’s benevolent local legend

Joseph Mitchell first wrote about Mazie Phillips in the New Yorker in 1940; a brash, bold, fearless lioness of the Lower East Side who worked the ticket booth of a local cinema and walked New York’s streets during the Great Depression, giving the “bums” dimes and nickels for food, bars of soap, sips of booze from her flask. They called her Queen of the Bowery, Saint Mazie, and everyone knew her name.

Jami Attenberg’s fictional reconstruction of Mazie’s life is a bold departure from how historical novels are usually written. Split between fictionalised diary entries, excerpts from The Unpublished Autobiography of Mazie Phillips-Gordon (also fiction) and Attenberg’s invented interviewees, the structure resonates a relentless energy that keeps the narrative rattling along.

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