Saint Mazie - Hardcover

"Full of love and drink and dirty sex and nobility.... Attenberg takes Mitchell's witty, colorful piece and spins it into something equally lively and new."--New York Times Book Review

"Boisterous and compassionate."--O Magazine

"Attenberg is a nimble and inventive storyteller with a particular knack for getting at the heart of outsized characters. . . . [she] proves her chops as a historical novelist by perfectly capturing Mazie's jazz-age voice, which ranges from clipped and vulgar to melancholy and lyrical. Attenberg also sidesteps many of the pitfalls of the form: no day-by-day plodding through the decades, no unedited research notes masquerading as dialogue. She resists any plot twist or final revelation to provide a tidy psychological explanation for Mazie Phillips-Gordon sainthood."--Washington Post

"[F]resh and witty... SAINT MAZIE looks deep into the spirit of generosity. Jami Attenberg's Mazie lives a very big life in a very small space, turning her darkest experiences into something inspiring."--Wall Street Journal

"Attenberg captures Mazie's voice so vividly you can close the book and still hear her talking. She is a tremendous achievement. ...[A] bold, magnificent book about family, altruism, women and freedom, as well as a love letter to New York and a timely social manifesto for the 21st century."--The Guardian

"A winning novel and a lovely tribute to a New Yorker whose only claim to fame is her outsized kindness. Her Mazie is richly imagined and three-dimensional, and in these pages she lives forever."--Los Angeles Times

"[I]ngeniously constructed.... An attentive character study that also happens to be rich in city lore and period detail, SAINT MAZIE is an edifying, companionable and moving novel."--Kansas City Star

"An exuberant portrait of an unforgettable woman and the city she loves." --BBC.com

"The hugely talented Jami Attenberg, most recently author of The Middlesteins, has built a novel based on an imagined diary of Mazie Phillips, a Bowery movie-theater proprietress."--New York Magazine

"The Middlesteins author Jami Attenberg has traded writing about the Midwest for Jazz Age New York-and, oh, what a glorious swap it is. If you love historical stories with bold language that vividly paint a picture of another era, you'll be so happy to spend your summer days alongside Mazie Phillips, the real-life proprietress of a downtown NYC movie theater called The Venice. Take a peek inside Mazie's diary, and get swept away."--Bustle, "The 17 Best Books of Summer"

An ingenious novel that imagines the life and times of Mazie Philips, a real-life saint from New York City, by the highly acclaimed author of The Middlesteins