• Reese’s Book Club Pick for March 2024
• Indie Next Selection for March 2024
• Book of the Month Club Selection
BEST BOOK of 2024 by TIME, Book Riot, ArtNet, HipLatina, New York Post, Ms., People, WABE, Cosmopolitan, Brit + Co, Forbes, Vulture, and more!
MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK of 2024 by The New York Times, TIME, TODAY, ELLE, Real Simple, Washington Post, Kirkus, Refinery29, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, Bookshop, Good Housekeeping, Electric Literature, OC Register, BookPage, Book Riot, LitHub, HipLatina, and more!
Praise for Anita de Monte Laughs Last
“Gonzalez’s sophomore outing deserves a mouse on her doorstep in gratitude... This is a brutal but ultimately heartwarming and certainly thought-provoking novel.”
—Booklist, starred review
“Part campus novel, part ghost story, Gonzalez’s second novel fearlessly takes on the rarefied world of fine art and art history... Anita de Monte Laughs Last boldly questions the choices behind what we are taught and demands that the complete story be disclosed.”
—BookPage, starred review
“Gonzalez crafts excoriating and whip-smart commentary... This is incandescent.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.”
—Kirkus, starred review
“The writing is absolutely fabulous, the story is gripping, and the characters are memorable. Outstanding.”
—Library Journal, starred review
“Compelling and beautiful… Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a cry for justice. Writing with urgency and rage, Gonzalez speaks up for those who have been othered and deemed unworthy, robbed of their legacy.”
—Washington Post
“Gonzalez’s most arresting work to date, a direct, poetic confrontation of the point where history fails her real-life inspiration.”
—Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism
“The novel is the best, most elusive combination: a thought-provoking and a brilliantly entertaining triumph.”
—NPR
“Admirers of Xochitl Gonzalez’s debut, Olga Dies Dreaming, will be pleased to encounter in Gonzalez’s follow-up novel, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, not one but two protagonists who echo the titular Olga’s best qualities.”
—New York Times
“Mesmerizing.”
—TIME
“It is this kind of genre-busting distinguishes [Gonzalez’s] writing… Gonzalez is similarly nuanced in her clear-eyed construction of skewed value systems.”
—Financial Times
“This rollicking page-turner from the bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming includes of-the-moment commentary about who succeeds and why.”
—Real Simple
“Unflinching and thought-provoking.”
—People
“A gorgeous, ponderous and bitingly sharp takedown of the art world and its hypocrisies.”
—Bookreporter
“Unforgettable.”
—Marie Claire
“Xochitl Gonzalez’s sophomore novel packs the same powerful punch in the sharp and humorous style we loved in Olga Dies Dreaming. With Anita, Gonzalez offers a potent examination of power, love and opportunity—who gets them and who gets left behind.”
—Ms Magazine
“Propulsive.”
—Brit + Co
“Funny, piercing, and full of moxie… an affirmation for anyone who's ever had to ‘work twice as hard to get half as much.’”
—Robert Jones Jr., author of The Prophets
“An imagined story of a remarkable woman in a time when we think of the New York art world as belonging to Basquiat and Warhol… about reclaiming what has been erased.”
—Ana Castillo, author of So Far From God