1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn't. By 1998 Anita's name has been all but forgotten--certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret. But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita's story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist.
An unflinching examination of power and privilege ... A compelling and beautiful homage to this overlooked artist and an uncompromising indictment of a White-centered, male-dominated establishment that silences some voices while elevating others.
Gonzalez's depiction of the racial and economic dynamics of Raquel's boastfully liberal yet starkly socially stratified Ivy League college is scalpel sharp and painfully accurate ... The questions the text raises are abundant ... Elegantly written and constructed, Gonzalez's second novel brilliantly surpasses the promise of her popular debut.
The seamless overlap between real life and fictional counterparts, and the faithful reproduction of such well-established facts, conveys the author’s intention to offer a crystal clear clé to this roman à clef ... If Gonzalez’s intention is to compare the experiences of these two women against their common backdrop, her decision to set her protagonists only 13 years apart is curious. Who questions how little progress was made when so little time has passed? Spacing Anita’s and Raquel’s lives further apart would have allowed the author to emphasize what has changed in the art world, alongside what has not ... After Anita’s death, the novel takes a sharp detour into magical realism, following the artist into a liminal, post-death existence that incorporates her posthumous commentary ... It asks a good deal of a reader to shape-shift with Anita, and while many may gladly make that jump with the author, I found I wasn’t one of them. In the end, it was simply a leap (or, more likely, a push) too far.
