This was really interesting and I loved its setting in the art world. Magical realism is sometimes a bit harder for be to get on board with and suspend disbelief since so much of the world is “the real world” it is more difficult to accept these fantastical elements but I did acclimate to it. I listened to the audiobook and while the performance was very well done and I think I would have enjoyed it at a play or onscreen, it was sometimes distracting in the audiobook. I don’t always enjoy audiobooks with a lot of dramatic interpretation. But I’m glad I read it.

The Brooklyn-based Xochitl Gonzalez is an inspiring writer to follow. At forty, she made the decision to pivot in her career and pursue a lifelong dream of writing fiction. She enrolled in the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop and in 2021 received an MFA. A year later, her debut novel Olga Dies Dreaming was published and quickly hit the NYT best-seller list. In that remarkable novel, Gonzalez managed to combine an approachable, entertaining family story with powerful considerations of identity, poverty, race, capitalism, corruption, love, honor, elite privilege, feminism, Puerto Rico and its history and politics.

Now, in Gonzalez’s second book, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, readers are in for another thrilling ride. Again, Gonzalez delivers a satisfying, propulsive story as she relates the sometimes-parallel experiences faced by two Latina women who a decade apart must each navigate elitist, alien environments. As her characters confront the mores and expectations of the New York art world and Ivy League academia, Gonzalez points a high beam into the shadows to locate the traps of racism, sexism and class biases that undercut her main characters at every turn. In so doing, she once again deftly incorporates into her fiction the piercing social critique that readers have come to admire.

The book opens in the mid-1980s. Up-and-coming Cuban American artist Anita de Monte is attending a crowded art-world party. De Monte feels elated, hardly even bothered that her faithless, superstar husband, sculptor Jack Martin, is off flirting with a young acolyte. Dancing the night away in a silver sequined dress, Anita nurses the thrilling knowledge that she has finally landed a solo exhibition in Rome at a prestigious gallery. But in only a few hours, Anita de Monte will be killed—hurtled out of an apartment window during a venomous argument with Jack.

Flash forward to a decade later. Raquel Toro is one of two non-white undergraduates in the Brown University art history department, and although she knows that she is smart and ambitious, she grapples with the sense of being on a completely different frequency from most of her cohort and professors. As she is entering her senior year, Raquel must choose her graduation thesis topic, a choice complicated by others hoping to influence her path. Must she follow the advice of her paternalistic advisor and write her thesis on the sculptor Jack Martin? When Raquel learns the full story about the life of vanished artist Anita de Monte, she will face the uncomfortable realization that women artists that speak to her experience rarely make it on to university art history syllabi. Adding to the complications of Raquel’s life, when handsome artist Nick Fitzsimmons turns his attention to her, how much of herself will she need to cede in order to meet his possessive and needy demands in their relationship?

The character of Anita de Monte––whose biography and artwork are closely based on artist (note the near anagram) Ana Mendieta (see Beyond the Book)––displays a high-octane, intense personality. Her chapters really stood out for this reader. Things begin to get a little supernatural mid-way through the story, as they must when one of a novel’s first-person narrators is no longer living––and here this reader did begin to wonder where Gonzales was heading. The author kept a firm hand on the tiller, however, creating in Anita a character so clearly drawn that it somehow felt plausible that her voice might reach beyond the grave. So, my advice is simple: seatbelt up and prepare for a bit of fictional turbulence. Gonzalez has fashioned a memorable character in Anita, a thrilling presence that nonetheless stays within the novel’s sometimes wacky boundaries.

Gonzales utilizes a first-person point of view as Anita and Raquel alternate telling their stories. While the Raquel chapters fall more squarely within a classic narrative arc, and her milder voice cannot match Anita’s powerful personality and spirit, her steps towards developing her own voice and confidence in the face of microaggressions and manipulations ground the novel, and will be particularly compelling to many readers.

In the end, Gonzalez’s arrows all hit their targets—the elite worlds of academia and the fine arts, racism, misogyny, gaslighting, power dynamics––with a full, furious force. That said, the book is not without its flaws. Powerful convictions can at times paint straw men of the baddies. Several chapters written from Anita’s husband’s egocentric perspective fell flat for me, although they successfully advance the plot. A pivotal scene involving Raquel’s cruel hazing from jealous fellow female art students also felt a bit improbable, yet is perhaps only one short step away from the less clearly expressed bullying that happens in life all the time.

Overall, this is a rollicking and insightful read, and I heartily recommend it.

Thank you for the opportunity to review an ARC copy. This review will run in the May 1 edition of BookBrowse,https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/pr307776

I have also written a "Beyond the Book" essay about Ana Mendieta: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/btb/index.cfm/ref/pr307776

By most accounts (including mine), Xochitl Gonzalez’s debut, Olga Dies Dreaming, was a knockout. Her sophomore novel packs the same powerful punch in the sharp and humorous style we loved in Olga. This one centers on Raquel, an art history student who discovers the story of Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world who was tragically killed years earlier and promptly forgotten. As Raquel struggles as a student of color in predominantly white elite art circles, she relates to Anita’s story. With Anita, Gonzalez offers a potent examination of power, love and opportunity – who gets them and who gets left behind. - Review published in Ms. Magazine, Spring 2024, "Bookmarks" column

Olga Dies Dreaming author González returns with a fiery, campus-y novel set in the worlds of academia and fine art. Smart and sophisticated (and more than a little sweary), this scintillating sophomore effort was everything I hoped for and more.

A promising young Cuban artist named Anita de Monte finds her work eclipsed by her relationship with an older, more prominent, white male artist, and she tragically dies before she truly has a chance to shine. A decade later, a bright young Puerto Rican art historian falls into a similar relationship trap, but when she discovers de Monte's work, she realizes just how fraught the art world can be for young women of color.

As a huge fan of Olga Dies Dreaming, I couldn't wait to get my hands on this one! It's a different vibe than Xóchitl González's debut, but equally captivating and full of surprises. Her sense of humor is so perfect and makes the big, emotional moments hit even harder. I love this book and thoroughly enjoyed rooting for Anita and Raquel from the first page to the last.