Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Gonzalez's (Olga Dies Dreaming, 2022) sophomore outing deserves a mouse on her doorstep in gratitude. Anita, her spirited spirit protagonist, learns that mice make a nice appreciation gift from a wise reincarnated bat she meets in the Ceiba tree where she is spending her afterlife after her suspicious death in 1985; "artists . . . could become bats. But only for as long as their art was serving its purpose." Anita's murderer, husband and famed minimalist artist Jack Martin, has done all he can to squelch what's remembered of her art and her voice. In the late–1990s, Puerto Rican undergrad Raquel Toro begins a prestigious internship via affirmative action, making her ripe for manipulation and exploitation by her overprivileged boyfriend. Gonzalez weaves these three perspectives and two converging time lines together within the art worlds and academia of New York City, Providence (Brown University), Cuba, and Spain in four parts, Falling, Parties, Visits, and Retrospectives. Anita's passionate, thrilling voice—Fast! Fast! Fast!—drives the story lines to a felicitous collision. Inspired by and dedicated to artist Ana Mendieta in light of her tragic death, this is a brutal but ultimately heartwarming and certainly thought-provoking novel of Latinx magic, family, and feminine power. Copyright 2024 Booklist Reviews.
Library Journal Reviews
In Anita de Monte Laughs Last, Gonzalez's follow-up to her multi-best-booked Olga Dies Dreaming, first-generation Ivy League student Raquel discovers the remarkable work of forgotten artist Anita de Monte, whose tangled relationships before her suspicious death eerily echo Raquel's own (200,000-copy first printing). Prepub Alert. Copyright 2023 Library Journal
Copyright 2023 Library Journal.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Gonzalez (Olga Dies Dreaming) takes inspiration from the mysterious 1985 death of Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta for this astute account of an art history student who researches the circumstances of a similar tragedy. Award winning Cuban artist Anita de Monte, who is married to successful minimalist artist Jack Martin (a stand in for the sculptor Carl Andre), mysteriously plummets to her death from the window of their 33rd-floor apartment in New York City. Gonzalez then jumps to 1998, when third-year Brown University art history student Raquel Toro is on the brink of starting her senior thesis on Martin. Raquel begins a coveted summer internship with Belinda Kim, an acclaimed Asian American feminist curator opposed to the "art for art's sake" philosophy trumpeted by Raquel's white thesis adviser. Under Kim's tutelage, Raquel learns of de Monte's mysterious death, propelling her research on Martin in an unexpected direction. Her own life begins to resemble de Monte's when she falls for a Brown classmate, a wealthy white up-and-coming artist with ties to the New York art world. Just as de Monte played second fiddle to Martin during their marriage, Raquel's boyfriend downplays her research, and both relationships fray due to the men's deceitful and manipulative behavior. In addition to the intrigue generated by Raquel's search for answers about de Monte's death, Gonzalez crafts excoriating and whip-smart commentary on the art world's Eurocentric conceptions of beauty and the racism faced by first-generation students of color. This is incandescent. Agent: Mollie Glick, CAA. (Mar.)
Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly.