Saint Mazie: A Novel by Jami Attenberg
Saint Mazie is the story of Mazie Phillips, a Jazz Age good-time girl who reluctantly takes a job at New York City's historic Venice Theater. From inside her ticket booth (or her cage, as she calls it) Mazie has a front row view of the effects of poverty and addiction in the Bowery. She meets a nun, Sister T, and the two strike up an unlikely friendship. Mazie eventually becomes a community fixture, helping out homeless men during the Great Depression.
The novel is made up of Mazie's diary entries, letters, and documentary style interviews from those who knew her. I loved the format as well as the titular character. Mazie is independent, big-hearted, and she tells it like it is.
Mazie keeps a flask with her inside her ticket booth and likes to visit her favorite Speakeasy, Finny's, after work. Mazie seems to prefer whiskey, unless it's one of those nights when "nothing but gin will do". What you put in your flask, however, is up to you. The nice thing about a flask is that it's discreet. Go ahead and fill that thing with 99 Bananas if that's what you like. No one will ever be the wiser.
"Rosie doesn't understand what it's like to love the streets. She doesn't see the shimmering cobblestones in the moonlight, she just wonders why the city won't put in another street lamp already. She doesn't see floozies trying to sweet-talk their customers, earning every nickel they get, working as hard as the rest of us. She just sees crime. She doesn't see the nuns and the Chinamen and the sailors and barkeeps - the whole world full of such different people. It's just crowds to her, blocking her way. She sees a taxi whisking by and she thinks, what's the hurry? And I think, where's the party?
That's what I want to tell her! There's a party."
Mazie keeps a flask with her inside her ticket booth and likes to visit her favorite Speakeasy, Finny's, after work. Mazie seems to prefer whiskey, unless it's one of those nights when "nothing but gin will do". What you put in your flask, however, is up to you. The nice thing about a flask is that it's discreet. Go ahead and fill that thing with 99 Bananas if that's what you like. No one will ever be the wiser.
I absolutely recommend this book. I checked it out from the library but will probably end up buying a copy of my own. It would also make a great gift for anyone interested in this period of American history.
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