It’s always a bit of a crapshoot when I purchase a book at the airport. This one jumped out at me because I lived in NYC for seven years, and because I find the 20s and 30s fascinating. The book is based on the real-life Mazie Gordon, although it isn’t an actual biography. It’s fiction, a collection ostensibly based on Ms. Gordon’s journal. The author Jami Attenberg employs an interesting method to tell the story: the reader is the ‘author’, to a degree. We read Mazie’s […]
A New York Love Story
Saint Mazie is the fictional story of a young woman in New York City. Told through Mazie’s diary excerpts and interviews with those who knew her or knew of her, the story begins in 1907, when 10-year-old Mazie received the diary as a present, and runs until 1939, when the entries end. From the first pages, we learn that Mazie was a woman of some note in the Bowery, a queen to some, a saint to others, and yet she questioned whether or not she […]