Last Night at the Blue Angel: A Novel Audiobook

Quotes

• “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

• “Gorgeously written…a clear-eyed account of the human damage that great artistry can leave in its wake.”

  — Jean Thompson, New York Times bestselling author

• “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

• “An unflinching coming-of-age novel that draws us deep into the lives of indelible characters while also telling us the broader story of a time and place.”

  — Marisa Silver, New York Times bestselling author

• “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

• “[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

• “[An] engaging debut…Rotert has composed a soulful and touchingly sad mother-daughter blues that lingers after it’s over.”

  — San Francisco Chronicle

• “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

• “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

• “A solid debut that throws a curve ball at the end, Rotert’s novel sprinkles passion, determination, and struggle into its chapters…The story shifts nicely from Naomi and her daughter Sophia’s point of view, allowing all details to fall into place.”

  — RT Book Reviews (4 stars)

• “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)

• “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)

• “Rotert has created a complicated and engaging heroine in Sophia, a memorable character portrait which is her book’s most striking aspect.”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “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, 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, author of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford