Anita de Monte Laughs Last

Olga Dies Dreaming author González returns with a fiery, campus-y novel set in the worlds of academia and fine art. In 1985, artist Anita de Monte falls to her death during a nasty fight with her husband, the prominent artist Jack Martin, whose fragile ego is threatened by Anita’s burgeoning success. Jack calls it an accident and carries on like nothing happened, but Anita is determined to make him pay. Flash forward to 1998, when Brown art student Raquel is preparing to launch her senior thesis on Martin, but gets sidetracked when she learns of Anita’s forgotten art—and suspicious death. Raquel admires the work and feels a kinship with its creator, another outsider in the art world. Raquel may hang with the white and rich Art History Girls, but as a first generation Puerto Rican college student, she can’t—and doesn’t want to—be mistaken for one. Plus the ways her own aspiring artist boyfriend’s actions resemble Jack’s are deeply unsettling. Smart and sophisticated (and more than a little sweary), this scintillating sophomore effort was everything I hoped for and more. Bianca Bosker’s nonfiction work Get the Picture would make a fascinating flight pick.