Point of View

Author Attenberg employs techniques traditional in oral storytelling, or "spoken word." The narrative is a mosaic of Mazie's diary entries, interspersed occasionally with accounts from those who either knew her or, through others, heard about her life.

In her journaling, Mazie chronicles events in first-person—often shifting between past- and present-tense. The characters writing and/or discussing Mazie for the most part use these same viewpoints. Mazie does not open and close remembered dialogue with quotation marks, which takes an effort to get used to.

Present-day film-maker Nadine's questions to interviewees are never see, only the responses, rendered in first-person past tense.

As a whole, Attenberg's epistolary/historical format effectively brings alive Mazie's world. Had the novel been written from a third-person, past-tense perspective, there would be an undercutting of effect.

Language and Meaning

Author Attenberg deftly employs authentic speech patterns and period jargon in...