Signed, Mata Hari by Yannick Murphy

Originally published in Time Out New York, November 22, 2007

On October 15, 1917, a French firing squad executed Margaretha Zelle, the infamous courtesan and alleged German spy known across Europe as Mata Hari. Ninety years, six films and more than a dozen biographies later, the events leading up to her trial still remain shrouded in mystery, but in the intoxicating new novel Signed, Mata Hari, Yannick Murphy imaginatively fills in the gaps. The result is a sympathetic portrayal of one of the 20th century’s most vilified women: Murphy’s Mata Hari is not a callous femme fatale but an ordinary mother forced to do extraordinary things to survive.

The narrative, broken up into short (sometimes less than a page) chapters, weaves back and forth between Zelle’s memories of her past and a present-tense account of her stay in Saint-Lazare Prison. In lush prose, Murphy recounts her marriage at age 19 to a brutish Dutch naval officer named MacLeod and the couple’s relocation to the island of Java in Indonesia. When MacLeod takes off with their daughter, Zelle reinvents herself as Mata Hari (Indonesian for “eye of the day”) and begins working as an exotic dancer in order to earn the money necessary to get her child back.

Much like Mata Hari’s signature dance, in which veils are stripped off one by one, Murphy’s story reveals itself slowly, offering an impressionistic and speculative account of the alleged spy’s life and motivations. Murphy tends to skirt the espionage issue, and Signed, Mata Hari may not satisfy those looking for definitive answers. Still, the book succeeds as a lyrical tribute to a fascinating female icon.