Last Night at the Blue Angel - by Rebecca Rotert (Paperback)

About the Book

"A highly ambitious and stylish literary debut set against the 1960's Chicago jazz scene about a talented but troubled singer's heartbreaking relationship with her precocious ten-year-old daughter"--

Book Synopsis

Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s Chicago jazz scene, a highly ambitious and stylish literary debut that combines the atmosphere and period detail of Amor Towles' Rules of Civility with the emotional depth and drama of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, about a talented but troubled singer, her precocious ten-year-old daughter, and their heartbreaking relationship.

It is the early 1960s, and Chicago is a city of uneasy tensions--segregation, sexual experimentation, free love, the Cold War--but it is also home to one of the country's most vibrant jazz scenes. Naomi Hill, a singer at the Blue Angel club, has been poised on the brink of stardom for nearly ten years. Finally, her big break arrives--the cover of Look magazine. But success has come at enormous personal cost. Beautiful and magnetic, Naomi is a fiercely ambitious yet extremely self-destructive woman whose charms are irresistible and dangerous for those around her. No one knows this better than Sophia, her clever ten-year-old daughter.

For Sophia, Naomi is the center of her universe. As the only child of a single, unconventional mother, growing up in an adult world, Sophia has seen things beyond her years and her understanding. Unsettled by her uncertain home life, she harbors the terrible fear that the world could end at any moment, and compulsively keeps a running list of practical objects she will need to reinvent once nuclear catastrophe strikes. Her one constant is Jim, the photographer who is her best friend, surrogate father, and protector. But Jim is deeply in love with Naomi--a situation that adds to Sophia's anxiety.

Told from the alternating perspectives of Sophia and Naomi, their powerful and wrenching story unfolds in layers, revealing Sophia's struggle for her mother's love with Naomi's desperate journey to stardom and the colorful cadre of close friends who shaped her along the way.

Sophisticated yet poignant, Last Night at the Blue Angel is an unforgettable tale about what happens when our passion for the life we want is at sharp odds with the life we have. It is a story ripe with surprising twists and revelations, and an ending that is bound to break your heart.

From the Back Cover

It is the early 1960s, and Chicago is teeming with the tensions of the day--segregation, sexual experimentation, the Cold War, and Vietnam--but it is also home to some of the country's most influential jazz. Naomi Hill, a singer at the Blue Angel club, has been poised on the brink of stardom for nearly ten years. But when her big break, the cover of Look magazine, finally arrives, it carries with it an enormous personal cost. Sensual and magnetic, Naomi is a fiercely ambitious yet self-destructive woman whose charms tend to hurt those around her, and no one knows this better than her daughter, Sophia.

As the only child of a single mother growing up in an adult world, Sophia is wise beyond her years, a casualty of her mother's desperate struggle for fame and adoration. Her only constant is the colorful and unconventional family that surrounds them, particularly the photographer Jim who is Sophia's best friend, surrogate father, and protector--but Jim is also deeply in love with Naomi.

Last Night at the Blue Angel is a poignant and unforgettable story about what happens when our passion for the life we want is at sharp odds with the life we have. Part stylish period piece, part heartbreaking family drama, it's a vivid and propulsive page-turner--and the major debut of an extraordinary new writer.

Review Quotes

"Last Night at the Blue Angel is many things, all of them hugely admirable: a delineation of what it means, in technical and emotional terms, to be a singer; a plea, if not a demand, for tolerance; a panegyric to the liberating power of passion; and perhaps most importantly, one of the most evocative renderings of a child's precocity and appreciativeness in the face of a mother's distracted self-absorption--and how it actually feels to be in thrall to someone else's happiness--since Mona Simpson's Anywhere But Here." - Jim Shepard, acclaimed author of Like You'd Understand, Anyway
"A fascinating and extraordinarily moving first novel populated by complex, sympathetic characters and told in such gorgeous, poetic prose that you'll frequently stop to linger over the sentences. Rebecca Rotert is the real deal. It doesn't happen that often." - Ron Hansen, acclaimed author of Atticus and Mariette in Ecstasy
"One of the most evocative renderings of a child's precocity and appreciativeness in the face of a mother's distracted self-absorption--and how it actually feels to be in thrall to someone else's happiness--since Mona Simpson's Anywhere But Here." - Jim Shepard, acclaimed author of Like You'd Understand, Anyway
"A fascinating and extraordinarily moving first novel populated by complex, sympathetic characters and told in such gorgeous, poetic prose that you'll frequently stop to linger over the sentences. Rebecca Rotert is the real deal. It doesn't happen that often." - Ron Hansen, acclaimed author of Atticus and Mariette in Ecstasy
"A striking discovery, filled with surprises both marvelous and shocking. As the story weaves back and forth in time, spinning out the lives and dreams of a mother and a daughter, the language itself sings in moments of poignant beauty." - Lauren Belfer, bestselling author of City of Light and A Fierce Radiance
"A striking discovery, filled with surprises both marvelous and shocking. As the story weaves back and forth in time, spinning out the lives and dreams of a mother and a daughter, the language itself sings in moments of poignant beauty." - Lauren Belfer, New York Times bestselling author of City of Light and A Fierce Radiance
"A poignant tale." - NY Daily News
"A narcissistic single mom and an only daughter who is wise beyond her years. The storyline isn't new to fiction, but Rebecca Rotert's first novel, Last Night at the Blue Angel, offers an engagingly fresh and poetic take on the familiar relationship. . . . [but] the novel's real strength is in watching Sophia gradually learn to make sense of her fractured life." - Columbus Dispatch
"[A] delicious debut . . . While Naomi may perform on stage, it is her daughter Sophia who steals the show and gives this novel its considerable heart." - Chicago Tribune, Editor's Pick
"[A] delicious debut . . . While Naomi may perform on stage, it is her daughter Sophia who steals the show and gives this novel its considerable heart." - Chicago Tribune, Editor's Pick
"It is hard to believe that Last Night at the Blue Angel is Rebecca Rotert's debut novel, as it simply shimmers with feeling. Her range of emotional evocation and ability to touch a reader so fiercely with beautiful words makes the book a pure pleasure to read. But beware, it may be full of laughter, yes, but it is also full of anger, foolishness, fear, heartbreak and tears. At the very least, it will leave you gasping." - Bookreporter.com
"It is hard to believe that Last Night at the Blue Angel is Rebecca Rotert's debut, as it simply shimmers with feeling. Her range of emotional evocation and ability to touch a reader so fiercely with beautiful words makes the book a pure pleasure to read." - Bookreporter.com
"[An] engaging debut . . . Rotert has composed a soulful and touchingly sad mother-daughter blues that lingers after it's over." - San Francisco Chronicle
"[An] engaging debut . . . Rotert has composed a soulful and touchingly sad mother-daughter blues that lingers after it's over." - San Francisco Chronicle
"The city's colorful '60s jazz scene is a playground for a woman as beautiful and talented as Naomi . . . [and] Rotert, an accomplished singer herself, beautifully evokes the vibrancy of this setting. But her true artistry lies in the complex mother-daughter relationship at the center of this story, and the deeply sympathetic, nuanced, heartbreaking character of Sophia, a child in an adult world on the brink of enormous change." - Shelf Awareness
"In her stirring debut, Rebecca Rotert has fashioned a nimble, hard-edged and unflinching coming-of-age novel that does what the best novels do: it draws us deep into the lives of indelible characters while also telling us the broader story of a time and place, in this case, a mid-twentieth century Midwest where repressive social mores are just beginning to fray. In a world of private desires and public performance, a nun falls from grace, old buildings are heedlessly destroyed to make room for an idea of modernization which has not yet taken hold, and most notably, and heartbreakingly, a child must parent her own mother. With deft and precise prose, Rotert mines these dualities for all they tell us about what is lost and what is gained when the tipping point is reached and change becomes not simply a sought after dream, but an inevitable reality." - Marisa Silver, New York Times bestselling author of Mary Coin
"Rebecca Rotert's stirring debut does what the best novels do: it draws us deep into the lives of indelible characters while also telling us the broader story of a time and place, in this case, a mid-twentieth century Midwest where repressive social mores are just beginning to fray." - Marisa Silver, New York Times bestselling author of Mary Coin
"Last Night at the Blue Angel is a gorgeously written coming of age story and a clear-eyed account of the human damage that great artistry can leave in its wake." - Jean Thompson, New York Times bestselling author of The Year We Left Home
"Last Night at the Blue Angel is a gorgeously written coming of age story and a clear-eyed account of the human damage that great artistry can leave in its wake." - Jean Thompson, New York Times bestselling author of The Year We Left Home
"Sophia Hill can take her place proudly beside such affecting child narrators as Francie Nolan of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. . . . The author has been able to capture the time she's writing about with historical references . . . wonderful turns of phrase and descriptive passages. At times, her writing is quite lyrical. This is an engaging story that brings Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City to mind." - Omaha World-Herald
"Sophia Hill can take her place proudly beside such affecting child narrators as Francie Nolan of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. . . . an engaging story." - Omaha World-Herald
"A moving portrait of a tumultuous yet tender mother-daughter relationship . . . With lush prose and well-drawn characters, this heartbreaking novel of love, loss, and the redemptive power of music also offers a satisfying glimpse of Chicago at a pivotal point in history." - Booklist (starred review)
"A moving portrait of a tumultuous yet tender mother-daughter relationship . . . With lush prose and well-drawn characters, this heartbreaking novel of love, loss, and the redemptive power of music also offers a satisfying glimpse of Chicago at a pivotal point in history." - Booklist (starred review)
"Rebecca Rotert traces the difficult contours of love and devotion--a fame-bound singer desperate to change her life, and her daughter, Sophia, who'll risk anything to stay in her mother's marred circle of light. Luminous and deeply affecting, this book swept me along and stole my heart." - Paula McLain, New York Times bestelling author of The Paris Wife
"Filled with music and memory, humor and poetry, Last Night at the Blue Angel is about the burdens of the past and the sometimes unrealistic promise of the future. You'll carry these characters around in your head long after you finish this exuberant, big-hearted novel." - Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train
"Filled with music and memory, humor and poetry, Last Night at the Blue Angel is about the burdens of the past and the sometimes unrealistic promise of the future. You'll carry these characters around in your head long after you finish this exuberant, big-hearted novel." - Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train
"[An] astonishing debut novel . . . Rotert's musical background informs Naomi's passion for performance, but it is her heartbreaking portrait of Sophia, so wise yet so vulnerable, that readers will remember long after the final page." - Library Journal (starred review)
"[An] astonishing debut novel . . . Rotert's musical background informs Naomi's passion for performance, but it is her heartbreaking portrait of Sophie, so wise yet so vulnerable, that readers will remember long after the final page." - Library Journal (starred review)
"Telling the story from Sophia's and Naomi's distinct perspectives, Rotert creates an expressive and haunting narrative highlighting Sophia's innocent vulnerability and her mother's single-minded obsession. Though the characters are very different, the author's interpretation of both emerges spot-on. . . . A tale that's poignant, poetic and heart-wrenching throughout." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Telling the story from Sophia's and Naomi's distinct perspectives, Rotert creates an expressive and haunting narrative highlighting Sophia's innocent vulnerability and her mother's single-minded obsession. . . . A tale that's poignant, poetic and heart-wrenching throughout." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)