Paula McLain Rebecca Rotert Paula McLain, author of the New York Times best-selling The Paris Wife, interviews Rebecca Rotert
Paula McLain (PM): From page one, I felt you really knew your story and these fascinating characters inside and out, Rebecca. What hooked you and got you writing this novel?
Rebecca Rotert (RR): Sophia’s voice appeared first and I immediately fell in love with her sensibility, her hyper-vigilance. Her mother, Naomi, demands an enormous amount of attention, and Sophia lives in the shadow of that appetite, like a riverbank constantly being shaped and re-shaped by Naomi’s currents. You could also say I’ve been thinking about this theme all my life. I was acutely aware from an early age of my own mother’s magnetism. In a way, the brighter she shone, the more private I got to be, and in that privacy my own internal world began – the reading, writing, painting, and music.
PM: As troubled, unpredictable and self-involved as Naomi is, I felt I understood her demons and history—what drives her. As her creator, you clearly found sympathy for her too. How?
RR: It’s tempting to see a troubled character as fixed, her actions as calculated. I think this is rarely the case. Once the larger narrative of a life comes into view, even the worst behavior begins to make sense. It’s always a risk to give space to less desirable characters but it’s infinitely more interesting.
PM: The descriptions of singing, listening to and performing songs are incredibly well done and feel true to life. What’s your own relationship to music?
RR: My family sings a LOT. I was classically trained, and sang in school choirs and plays. As a young adult I sang in a few bands and learned to write music, to show up at practice with lyrics and chords on a scrap of paper and have a song by the end of the night. I chose to limit Naomi’s artistry to singing other people’s music as another way for her self-expression to be truncated. If she wrote her own music, if she had that kind of agency, her story would be different, I think.
PM: I loved Jim! He’s the father Sophia would choose if she were able, and is the emotional glue for Naomi too. How can he remain so devoted when she’s put him through the wringer? Did you know from the start what a significant role he would come to play in the novel?
RR: I love Jim, too. He is the good guy, the “friend,” but I wanted to represent this relationship as a sort of performance, too. It’s not until both Jim and Naomi stop performing their designated roles – adorer, beloved - that they see each other clearly. I didn’t realize how catalytic Jim would become until researching the photographer, Richard Nickel, on whom he is loosely based. Nickel’s commitment to a lost cause was beautiful and tragic. Through Jim, I wanted to pay homage, however small and impressionistic, to Nickel.
PM: Sophia is raised by a colorful, unconventional family that somehow works just the same. Can you speak to what inspired Sister Eye, the other nuns, and the fabulous Rita?
RR: These characters were gleaned from my life. I had one particular teacher who treated me with an undeserved and seemingly endless amount of patience and respect, and stood by me through my development as a writer as well as countless personal difficulties. I also believe that nuns are among the smartest, fiercest, most radical women I’ll ever know—and Rita is surely a tribute to all the fearless characters in my life.
Review
“[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
“[An] engaging debut . . . Rotert has composed a soulful and touchingly sad mother-daughter blues that lingers after it’s over.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“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
“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
“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 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
“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
“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 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)
“[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. . . . A tale that’s poignant, poetic and heart-wrenching throughout.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“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
From the Back Cover
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.
Weaving between the perspectives of Sophia and 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 novel rife with revelations, a vivid and propulsive page-turner—and the major debut of an extraordinary new writer.
About the Author
Andrus Nichols is a stage actress who has worked extensively in off-Broadway and off off-Broadway productions as well as regional theater and Shakespearean drama. She is also a singer and voice artist. She earned her bachelor's degree in literature at Bard College and her MSW at the University at Albany, State University of New York.
Rebecca Rotert received an M.A. in literature from Hollins College, where she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets prize. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and other publications. She's also an experienced singer and songwriter, who has performed with several bands, and a teacher with the Nebraska Writers Collective. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska. This is her first novel.
Caitlin Davies is an actress and voice artist. She has a bachelor's degree from Vassar College and has studied acting at the Eugene O'Neill National Institute, the British American Drama Academy, the Barrow Group, and Brown University/Trinity Rep.
