Sophia loves watching her emotional, but somehow distant
mother, Naomi, sing at the Blue Angel. For years, Naomi has
dreamed of fame and a chance to make something of herself in
spite of all life's hardships. Together, they must deal with
their relationship as it grows in both strength and despair
while they battle the stress of a not-so-glamourous life.
Full of touching prose, heartbreaking moments, and the exact
feel of a slow and soulful song, LAST NIGHT AT THE BLUE
ANGEL by Rebeca Rotert will have you up at all hours of the
night thinking about two characters who can't
fail to touch your heart. The alternating perspectives between Naomi
and
Sophia show how different and important perspective is as
well as how complicated the relationship between mother and
daughter can be. The crucial themes of learning how to love
without barriers while navigating both the simplicity and
complexity of everyday life and how to distinguish truth
and trust in a world of agendas, vanity, and greed are
absolutely mesmerizing and would be excellent for a group
discussion.
What I love the most is the contrast between Sophia and her
mom. On one hand, we have the story of a young woman who
never quite fit in but whose love could embody a hundred
songs. On the other, we have the story of a young girl just
learning about the darkness of life while harboring the
oldest sort of soul on the inside. Their relationship is far
from perfect. It holds an emotional kind of distance, a
fragile balance, and even a little neglect, but it also
holds a powerful love worth fighting for.
Though the story leads up to the final night at the Blue
Angel, don't be surprised if you find your mind returning
there over and over after you finish the story. Rebecca
Rotert has written a stunning novel of desperate beauty in
LAST NIGHT AT THE BLUE ANGEL that will fit perfectly on
shelves with Emma Donoghue and Jodi Picoult.
Set against the turbulence of 1960s Chicago—a city in
transformation—and its legendary jazz scene, Last Night at
the Blue Angel is a lush and immensely heartfelt
mother-daughter tale about a talented but troubled singer’s
relationship with her precocious ten-year-old daughter.
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.
Unsettled by her home life, she harbors a terrible fear that
her world could disappear at any moment, and compulsively
maintains a list of everyday objects she might need to
reinvent should nuclear catastrophe strike. Her only
constant is the colorful and unconventional family that
surrounds her and her mother, particularly the photographer,
Jim, who is Sophia’s best friend, surrogate father, and
protector—but Jim is also deeply in love with Naomi.
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