Reese Witherspoon has selected Xochitl Gonzalez’s Anita de Monte Laughs Last as the latest pick for her popular book club.
Gonzalez’s novel, published Tuesday by Flatiron, follows Raquel, an art student who begins a romance with a fellow aspiring artist and learns the story of Anita de Monte, a rising star in the 1980s art world who was found dead in New York. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus praised the book as “an uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.”
Gonzalez told The Cut that the novel was inspired by Ana Mendieta, the Cuban American artist who died in 1985 after a fall from her 34th-floor apartment window. Her husband, sculptor Carl Andre, was tried and acquitted on a murder charge in connection with her death.
Gonzalez said that she heard Mendieta’s voice speak to her at the American Academy in Rome, where Mendieta was a resident not long before her death. “I wasn’t afraid, because that isn’t completely unusual for me,” she said. “I’m not, like, a medium or anything, though people have told me if I tried to tap into that, maybe I could be. But metaphysically unusual things aren’t altogether uncommon in my life.”
Witherspoon announced the novel’s selection in an Instagram video, saying, “I have always loved painting, and this book, it just dives right in about the mysterious world of art, and which artists get celebrated and which don’t. I’m going to give you a little spoiler here: Women do not get celebrated as much as male artists.”
She continued, “It asks some of those really big questions, like Who is remembered? and Who is left behind, and why? This one gave me goosebumps.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
