Saint Mazie

Title: Saint Mazie
Author: Jami Attenberg

The cover of this book holds so many promises -- an evocative drawing of a sardonic young woman casually smoking a cigarette in the box office of an old-fashioned movie palace called "The Venice", in shadows behind her, downtrodden men in what appears to be a bread line but those intriguing promises  are let down by the novel itself. Mazie Phillips (based on the real life Mazie Phillips-Gordon, "the Queen of the Bowery") does work in the box office of a turn-of-the-century cinema but she hates films. They make her literally ill. She lives with her sisters and brother-in-law and the book charts her life from World War One through to her legendary good deeds during the Great Depression, but it takes too long to get there. She is an intriguing and authentic heroine but the book meanders a little too much.

Fiction; rated 3 out of 5
Reviewed by Anonymous