Saint Mazie by Jami Attenberg (Serpent's Tail £12.99) is a heart-wringing novel inspired by an essay called Mazie in Joseph Mitchell's celebrated book of New York stories, Up in the Old Hotel. Attenberg's wondrous imagination breathes real life into the histories of people who have vanished into the past; the homeless, hungry victims of the Great Depression.
In 1907, aged 10, Mazie Phillips writes in her new diary: "My father is a rat and my mother is a simp." Mazie and her little sister Jeanie have been brought to New York by their big sister, Rosie. She is married to Louis, a big and kindly man with fingers in all sorts of pies. One of his concerns is a flea-pit of a cinema called The Venice Theater. At first, it's Rosie's job to sell the tickets, but her longing for a child is slowly driving her crazy, and her increasing fragility means Mazie must take over.
Mazie is beautiful, spirited and clever and, at first, she hates sitting in the tiny cage of a box office - but this is the way she gets to know all the characters in her neighbourhood. She finds romance with a handsome, married soldier, but has no real time for a life or love of her own.
Jeanie has grown up into a professional dancer and run away to California. Mazie stays because she must; she's the one doomed to do her duty, and her own dreams take second place.
Home has become a place to avoid, so Mazie spends her leisure time on the streets, and it's here that she finds her vocation, in the company of a selfless nun, "Sister Tee" (the relationship between Jewish Mazie and the Catholic Tee is very tenderly handled).
'This is the kind of fiction you don’t forget'
The depression of the 1930s has thrown thousands into poverty, and Mazie has a special compassion for the forgotten men; soon she's handing out small change, soap and free movie tickets to anyone who needs them. "I gave them all I had in my pockets and kept digging to see if I could find more."
Jami Attenberg has breathed life into Mitchell's legend of the Queen of the Bowery, by using a chorus of different voices - Mazie's secret diary, interviews with her old neighbours, the first intrusions from the world of the New Yorker. It sounds scrappy but it's not; Attenberg never loses her grip on her story, which is a beautiful mixture of warmth, wit and moments of deep sorrow. I loved her last book, The Middlesteins, and Saint Mazie is just as engaging; this is the kind of fiction you don't forget.
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