Eating Ashes by Brenda Navarro

First published in Mexico in 2022; published in translation by W.W. Norton/Liveright on January 20, 2026

The disturbing but familiar tropes of fiction from Mexico — drug cartels, violence against women — take a back seat to Brenda Navarro’s story of a woman whose move from Mexico to Spain did little to ease the pain of daily living. Most stories of emigration focus on the hope for a better life in a stable country. Navarro’s narrator has a different perspective: “Everyone wants to be something more, and they don’t even know how to be something less.” This is the only novel I can recall that looks back at the violence of a country like Mexico with nostalgia.

We never learn the narrator’s name, but her brother is Diego García. The narrator describes three defining events in her life. The first is her mother’s departure for Spain with the promise to send for her kids later. The narrator and her grandmother raise Diego as the years pass, waiting for their mother to make good on the promise. The narrator is clueless about what her mother has to do before she can obtain a residence card and arrange for their entry into Spain, but that is largely her mother’s fault for failing to keep her kids updated.

The second is the narrator’s eventual relocation to Spain with Diego. Most of the novel takes place in that country, first in Madrid where her mother lives and then in Barcelona where she joins her cousins to get away from her mother.

The third is Diego’s death by suicide. The narrator tells the reader about that death early in the story. It is the central event that shapes her young life.

While living in Spain, the narrator tells us that she misses everything about Mexico: “my grandmother cooking for me, even if there were times when she’d blow a gasket and get all intense, and my grandfather taking me to the movies. … And I missed the noise of the street, the music, how loud the cars were, and the tension.” She misses “not Mexico the country,” but “Mexico as a yearning.” Mostly she misses the innocence and joy of Diego as he was when they lived in Mexico. It appears that what she misses is not Mexico but the childhood she left there.

Oddly, she also misses “that strange sense of belonging, but at the same time of being a crab in a bucket climbing onto the backs of the others, trying to get out.” She misses “the passion that comes from hunger, from exhaustion, from discontent.” By contrast, Europe is passionless, a place where “what you breathed in was a sort of calm that was more like boredom. Europe seemed boring and old and lonely.”

The narrator isn’t saying that life is too easy in Spain — she still lives in relative poverty and hates the menial jobs she takes — but in Mexico she shared her hardships with others. She does not feel she belongs in Spain, where people look down on her because of her Mexican ancestry, her low station in life. She doesn’t like cleaning houses or the rear ends of old folk. She tries a gig job making deliveries but it wears her out. She doesn’t like her Scottish boyfriend because he exploits her. One message the novel delivers is that emigration leads to isolation for immigrants who are not accepted as equals in their new home.

While I appreciated that message, the story is not without its downsides. I came to think of the narrator as a whiner who has a sense of entitlement that people are usually born into. Yes, it’s hard being poor, but her stubborn refusal to return to Madrid where she could live a modestly better life with her mother, like her persistent lie to her boyfriend about being a college student, are not endearing actions. The narrator refuses to return because she “needed to prove to my mom that I could fend for myself, that we could have another kind of relationship where she wasn’t the one in charge, the one who decided for me.” Her uncle is the only character who has the courage to put her in her place: “In this family, he said, pointing a finger at me, your mother was the only one who was able to shake off all this shit we live in. Quit feeling sorry for yourself and honor her decision.”

By the novel’s end, the narrator redeems herself a bit by confessing her hypocrisy (she criticizes Diego for stealing but is herself a thief) and recognizing her selfish nature. In that sense, Eating Ashes might be seen as a coming-of-age novel with a “you can’t go home again” theme.

A more traditional theme in novels about immigration is the unfortunate reality of intolerance that pervades most nations. Ethnic Catalans in Spaiin don’t like other Spaniards, Spaniards don’t like immigrants, immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries don’t like Pakistanis, the old and the young dislike each other, and on and on. Diego’s school in Madrid punishes him for fights that were started by Spanish kids; school officials assume that the immigrant kid is the troublemaker. The narrator undergoes body cavity searches for drugs at border crossings while white people are unmolested. A character named Jimena who emigrated to Spain reminds readers of Mexico’s intolerance of the LGBTQ community.

After the narrator carries her brother’s ashes back to Mexico, we catch glimpses of the disappearances and sexual harassment that plague Mexican society. In the most vivid scene, a woman recounts the death of her sister, who is killed in a bar with a dozen others because her husband is in the military.  But this is not a story of human rights violations so much as it the very personal story of a young woman who has not yet overcome the grief and alienation that defines her life. The novel is a bit uneven but its most moving and insightful moments make it worthwhile for readers who want a different perspective on the experience of immigration.

RECOMMENDED

The Cormorant Hunt by Michael Idov

Published by Scribner on January 27, 2026

Of current authors of spy novels, only a handful reside in my first tier. Michael Idov has made that list on the strength of The Collaborators and its sequel, The Cormorant Hunt.

In the first novel, CIA agent Ari Falk made trouble for himself by giving a recording to an open-source intelligence website operated by Alan Keegan. In the recording, veteran CIA agent Rex Harlow confesses that he attempted to rig Russia’s 1996 election and, twenty-five years later, murdered several people who got wind of his dirty tricks. Harlow referred to the operation’s mastermind as the Cormorant.

The story begins with Katya Lisichenko crossing into Estonia from Russia in the early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She is detained because records show that she made the same crossing two days earlier. She didn’t, so someone must have been using her name.

The story then shifts to Keegan’s receipt of an email with the subject line “a message for Ari Falk.” Keegan doesn’t know how anyone would know of his connection to Falk, apart from people at the top of the CIA hierarchy. Keegan traces the email to Petra Lorencová, an employee of Radio Free Europe in the Czech Republic. He travels there and confronts Petra, who claims she was paid by an unknown source to send the email. The meeting does not end well for Petra or Keegan.

We next encounter Falk, who is living off the grid in the Republic of Georgia. Worried that he is being framed for Keegan’s fate, Falk decides it is time to run. The current deputy director of operations at the CIA (who owes her job to Falk’s outing of Harlow), Asha Tamaskar, dispatches a Mormon CIA agent, Jim Otterbeck, to find Falk. Otterbeck dislikes Falk but the feeling is mutual. It helps Falk’s cause that Otterbeck is straight-laced while Falk is devious.

The other primary plot element involves Felix Burnham, the “champagne version” of Andrew Tate, an advocate of a silly but popular “men’s rights” movement. Burnham has the “slippery, shape-shifting charisma of a born cult leader.” Burnham’s podcast appeals to insecure young men who blame their problems on women, LGBTQ people, and nonwhite immigrants rather than their own disagreeable personalities.

Burnham’s podcast is, naturally enough, financed by Russia in its never-ending attempt to destabilize progressive western nations. Using those funds, Burnham is “putting together a purpose-built private army.” Tamaskar would like to do something about it, but worries that she will be undermined by the Cormorant.

In addition to Ivov’s ridicule of the men’s rights movement, I appreciated his take on the dangers of the modern world. Falk understands that, thanks to Russia, the left-right distinction is no longer relevant. “The only existential standoff now was between the people who wanted to replace institutions with better institutions and the people who wanted to replace institutions with themselves.”

As was true of the first book, the story is clever. The plot eventually links characters in unexpected ways. While the action moves quickly, Ivov takes time to flesh out secondary characters, assigning credible motivations that are consistent with their actions. While characters take heroic risks for the greater good, I also enjoyed the characterization of the CIA’s hackers as “insufferable geeks who considered themselves God’s gift to the Agency.”

In this second novel, Ivov cements himself as a must-read author for spy novel fans. His prose is clear and forceful, even if he lacks the stylistic brilliance of the genre’s master, John Le Carré. That’s not a knock, because there was only one Le Carré. In his ability to craft credible but exciting plots, reasonably deep characters, and perceptive analyses of world events, Idov is an exceptional spy novelist.

RECOMMENDED

Excession by Iain M. Banks

First published in 1996; published by Orbit on January 20, 2026

Long before AI became a media-dominant thing, Iain M. Banks was writing about a future shared by humans and a civilization of AI known as the Culture. Members of the Culture take the form of space-faring ships and, no less than humans but at much faster speeds, quarrel about moral behavior and their individual places in the universe.

Banks (who sans the middle initial, also wrote worthwhile mainstream novels) died in 2013, leaving behind nine novels and a collection of short stories in the Culture universe. Excession is the fifth in the series. Because it is one of the few I missed, I was pleased to see that Orbit is rereleasing the novel in paperback and ebook editions.

The story begins with Dajeil Gelian confined in a tower overlooking a hologram of a sea that is housed in a ship named Sleeper Service. Dajeil shares her prison with a black bird named Gravious. Dajeil is pregnant and, we eventually learn, has been in that condition for decades. The ship’s avatar notifies Dajeil that it finally has a mission and will be leaving its guests (most either bodies in suspended animation or existing as stored data) in appropriate habitats.

The mission involves the Excession, an alien entity or artifact that is connected to the energy grids that exist above and below the universe. Nobody known to the Culture has ever seen anything like it. It seems to be older than the universe itself; its ability to connect to the energy grids is astonishing. When a Culture offshoot, the Elench, stumbles upon it and investigates, the Elench ship is taken over. A drone manages to escape the ship but is soon destroyed, leaving behind a small but detectable (if another ship knows where to look) debris field.

Special Circumstances (the “espionage and dirty tricks department” of the Culture’s Contact section) recruits Byr Genar-Hofoen to perform a secret task that indirectly pertains to the Excession. Byr is currently a human ambassador to a war-prone alien race called the Affront. Special Circumstances arranges his transportation on an Affront vessel to a Culture ship that will rendezvous with Sleeper Service. It turns out that Byr and Dajeil have a history.

Much of the novel involves real and suspected conspiracies among various Culture ships that relate to the Excession. Some Culture ships want to manage contact with the Excession; others want to confront it. The Affront concoct a scheme to control some old Culture warships in an effort to claim the Excession for their own purposes. Chaos ensues.

The novel includes a story within a story that becomes the main story, focused on Byr’s troubled relationship with Dajiel. Most of this is told by way of backstory. No fan of monogamy, Byr nevertheless made a quasi commitment to Dajiel by changing himself into a woman (the process takes about a year in the far future but no surgery is required) so that both can become pregnant with the other’s child (no penetration needed, although Byr in male form is a big fan of penetration). Jealousy ensues when Byr, in female form, canoodles with another woman.

Excession is far from my favorite Culture novel but the universe Banks created is so intricate and interesting that I always enjoy paying it a visit. The few human characters behave like humans (i.e., they are messy) while the ships send wonderfully snarky messages to each other. The potential war between the Culture and Affront, as well as the potential conflict with the Excession, resolve in a way that might be criticized as predictable, but the process of getting to that point is more than half the fun. While the story is lengthy and occasionally bogs down, I have to recommend it to Culture fans.

Newcomers to the series should probably start with the first novel, Consider Phlebas, to gain context that will aid appreciation of the others. Consider Phlebas is also one of the best in the series. Culture completists should nevertheless add Excession to their Banks collection if they haven't already.

RECOMMENDED

The Method by Matthew Quirk

Published by William Morrow on January 20, 2026

Anna Vaughn isn’t an action hero, but she’s an actress who has trained in boxing and other martial arts so she can play action roles on television. While she hasn’t had a particularly successful career, she has played a few parts, usually ending in death scenes. By the novel’s end, Anna comes across as a Special Forces combat trainer combined with a cage fighter. I never bought the notion that an actress who learned enough moves to earn roles on cable TV shows would so readily defeat armed killers in fight after fight. But such is the nature of the modern thriller

Anna’s best friend, Natalie Harris, also works in the film and TV industry. Natalie likes to party. Anna is sure Natalie is keeping a secret from her. Perhaps she has a new boyfriend she doesn’t want Anna to know about. When they get together for their weekly movie night, Natalie has a more expensive bottle of wine than she would ordinarily buy. Anna overhears Natalie say something about a “red door” during a hushed telephone conversation.

Natalie disappears. We soon learn that Natalie is being interrogated by a psychopath named Sontag. He wants to recover a flash drive that has videos of women being tortured and killed. How did Natalie get the videos? The answer, like the novel as a whole, is hard to swallow.

Going through her stuff in search of clues to Natalie’s disappearance, Anna finds a cocktail napkin from an upscale hotel. Anna visits the hotel bar and meets a fellow named Sebastian Valand, who seems to take an interest in her. Sebastian wants to introduce her to a wealthy man who has an interest in film, which might be code for an interest in hot actresses. Anna suspects that accepting that introduction will lead her to Natalie.

Kevin Matthews, who plays a shadowy role in the government, is also interested in Anna, primarily because of Sebastian. Matthews is tasked with finding a violent guy named Malak. He recruits Anna to act as an undercover agent, although the last woman he recruited for that role ended up dead. This time he promises to be more careful.

The plot is something of a mess. It blends together evil people from an oil-producing country, corrupt politicians, and a dubious plan to give Americans cheap gas (at least no foreign invasion is required). The torture videos have little to do with the rest of the plot (it turns out that authoritarians don’t want their sex crimes exposed; who knew?) but Matthew Quirk had to add them to get the action started. I didn’t buy it for a second.

The Method is the kind of thriller that comes across as a treatment for a movie, perhaps written with the hope that a producer will buy the film rights. Unfortunately, when Anna jumps from one roof to another, flying across a fourteen-foot gap, catching herself on the edge and pulling herself to safety as bullets whiz past her, the movie scene is far too familiar to work well in prose. Anna makes so many daring escapes that the last time she’s handcuffed, I was kinda hoping the villain would kill her for the sake of verisimilitude.

Quirk tries to give Anna a personality by making her afraid of finishing a fight, so the reader knows she will need to overcome that fear by the novel’s predictable ending. On the plus side, the story moves rapidly and Quirk’s prose is smooth. The Method is fairly typical of modern action thrillers, combining a convoluted and unbelievable plot with standard action scenes. The ending is contrived. Action thriller junkies might enjoy it, but there are better examples of the genre to bring to the beach.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

Published by Knopf on January 20, 2026

Julian Barnes is both the author and narrator of Departure(s). As narrator, Barnes tells us that he was in his mid-seventies during the pandemic. At some point in the story, he says “I’m writing this at the age of seventy-seven, and it is now my generation’s turn to die off.” The author turned 80 this month. It seems clear in the novel’s early pages that Barnes has cast himself as the narrator (he thinks about wearing a badge that says BUT I WON THE BOOKER PRIZE when he visits the hospital so that exhausted doctors, choosing which patients to treat and which to let die, will put him the “treat” column), but authors often give their doppelganger characters a different name. When a character later addresses the narrator as Mr. Barnes, all doubt about the narrator’s identity disappears.

As people get older, it’s natural for them to think about death. As novelists get older, they naturally write about death. It seems death is on Barnes’ mind when he proclaims, early in the story, “This will be my last book.” Barnes later reveals that he is living with (but probably won’t die of) a rare blood cancer. He notes that he has “had a lifelong engagement with death, both theoretical and actual, and have written about it many times.” Near the novel’s conclusion, he repeats that “this will definitely be my last book — my social departure, my final conversation with you.” He sounds like a man saying goodbye to literary life, if not to life itself. By assuring that he will not die in the middle of writing his last novel, Barnes is “denying agency to death.”

Barnes connects memory to death when he writes: “I have found myself thinking a lot in recent years about how we remember the dead, about how quickly memory becomes myth and once-living people are turned into a set of anecdotes (but how could it be otherwise?).” The novel touches on his memories of dead friends, as well as his uncertainty that his selective memories of them are accurate.

Barnes tells us that the novel will tell a story, or a story-within-the-story, but “not just yet.” First, he discusses involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs). The phenomenon was displayed by a man who, after having a stroke, tasted a pie and remembered — in order — every pie he had ever eaten. This is not quite like Proust’s famous madeleine that, when dunked in tea, set Marcel on a long journey of remembrance, because that journey was “a very leisurely, semi-voluntary, semi-automatic memory.”

Barnes is not flooded with memories (he imagines it would be a disagreeable experience, although he would be willing to try it), but he devotes careful thought to the nature of memory (“memory is identity”), including the inability to control memories, and particularly the tendency toward forgetfulness that accompanies old age. He suggests, with considerable merit, that the fullness of memory might be dreadful: “If humankind cannot bear very much reality, I suspect it also cannot bear too much knowledge about itself.”

The middle of the story begins with the question, “How to tell a story with a missing middle?” It focuses on his promise not to write about his friends Stephen and Jean, who became a couple after Barnes introduced them, then broke up and reunited forty years later, after Stephen conspired with Barnes to orchestrate a chance meeting. Julian writes that, at their wedding, his own unsuccessful sexual encounter with Jean “burst into my head with all the force of an involuntary autobiographical memory as I was double-checking that I had the ring safely in my pocket.”

Of course, Barnes breaks his promise by making Stephen and Jean characters in the story, but only after they die. They supply the “story within a story” that Barnes promised. It is both a love story and the story of a failed relationship. Jean complains that Stephen loves her too much or expresses his love in ways that annoy her — he drew her a bath after reading in the newspaper that women regard bath-drawing as the most romantic thing a man can do — while Stephen can’t understand why Jean would be upset that he loves her so much. Jean tells Barnes, ‘Love, in reality, Mr Novelist, isn’t how you and your breed depict it,” a comment that inspires Barnes to write about them, if only to create the kind of novel she seems to desire. Ultimately, Departure(s) is about the familiar topics of love and death (and the death of love) as experienced in memory.

Barnes discusses literature and name-drops without savaging his contemporaries, including Philip Larkin’s “Poetry of Departure,” John Updike’s writing about “flight and dreams of leaving,” Ismail Kadare’s death without winning the Nobel Prize, and Martin Amis’ refusal to continue treating his throat cancer (a choice also made by “another member of our band, Christopher Hitchens”). He also offers insight into less contemporary literary figures, from Proust to Baudelaire, from T.S. Eliot to Shakespeare. All of this is interesting to readers of contemporary fiction, although I was more taken with his discussion of a dog who, like dogs in general, doesn’t realize he’s a dog. Nor does the dog know that he will eventually die, allowing him to live in the moment without fear of the future or the torment of memory, a trick that mere humans have not mastered.

In one discussion of death, Barnes talks about the common perception that it is unfair for good people to acquire cancer while bad people live into old age — a perception that “comes, most probably, from a residue (or even a fullness) of religious belief.” He is moved by the innocence and puzzlement of people who experience that anguish, “but we have surely lived enough millennia on this planet to have noticed that life is not fair or just, and that bad things often happen to good people, and good things sometimes happen to bad people, and that sudden chaos lurks constantly beneath each placid surface.” That’s just the way life is, which might serve as an alternate title for the novel. And while he sometimes rages about death, he is comforted by the phrase “It’s just the universe doing its stuff” because ultimately, that’s all it is. One of his final points — “life is not a tragedy with a happy ending, despite what religion promises; rather, it is a farce with a tragic ending, or, at best, a light comedy with a sad ending” — is a bleak but honest assessment of the cycle of life and death.

Barnes writes about the elusive nature of happiness (“It may be that we each mean different things when we speak of love and happiness, within a couple, as well as within society”). He might be seen as fatalistic, or fatalism might be another word for acceptance of reality. He no longer believes that great art will endure. “Either we shall blow up the planet, and all art with it, or else we shall survive but evolve into something we cannot even imagine– but nothing like what we are now, with our simple longings for god and love and happiness and art. We shall develop into some life form as distant from us as we are from an amoeba.”

Departure(s) often reads more like a long essay than a novel, but a Booker winner has probably earned the right to write his last novel as he pleases. Like it or not (mostly not), we’re all going to die. Barnes made a difference, probably in many ways, but certainly as a novelist. His final book is part of a legacy that few can match. In the end, he looks back on his life and realizes it wasn’t so bad. That’s probably all that any of us can hope for.

RECOMMENDED