By Carole Reedy—

Reading is a deeply personal undertaking that, on reflection, can reveal an unknown side of the reader. It continually gives us new ways to view the world and the roles we choose to play in it.

The following books proved most satisfying to me this year, all unique in theme, approach, and style.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
The biggest surprise of the year was this compelling read by an author totally unknown to me. The core of the novel is a topic outside my interest zone, but a rave recommendation by a respected editor/friend piqued my curiosity.

The story takes place on an island off the coast of Antarctica, where an environmental research team has just closed its operation due to rising waters, which will soon overwhelm the entire island.

One family remains to finalize the departure, and this is their story. It’s an exciting, intricately plotted story, with twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat.

Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue
Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue
You Dreamed of Empires, Álvaro Enrigue’s highly energetic and entertaining novel, recently brought him deserved attention from both north and south of the border.

Enrigue’s newest, Now I Surrender (these words spoken by Geronimo), is a more serious yet equally engaging novel.

Although the story’s emphasis focuses on the Apaches, including Geronimo and The Long Walk, it reveals the truly convoluted history of the struggle in the region, now Arizona, New Mexico, Chihuahua, and Sonora, in the early nineteenth century.

Varying points of view zero in on the manipulations of those in power within Mexico and the US in an effort to annihilate the Apaches and other tribes. The manner in which Enrigue analyzes the governments of Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt addresses the cultural differences of the parties involved and reveals the author clearly in his element.

It is truly a work of art.

I couldn’t stop there. I had to read more of Enrigue’s work.

Sudden Death (2016) is a rollicking novel starting and ending in the sixteenth century with a tennis match between the controversial dynamic Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo, both well known for hot-headed impulsiveness.

The novel roams from the court of Henry VIII, in which the locks of Anne Boleyn’s severed head play a role, to the conquest of Mexico, where Hernán Cortés and his Indigenous interpreter and adviser, Malintzin, play central roles.

Enrigue’s imagination and style are unmatched, and his talented translator Natasha Wimmer deserves equal praise.

The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag
The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
These two books come from different eras. Sontag’s novel is set in eighteenth-century Naples, while Finkel tells a true story from the late twentieth century. The lifestyles and circumstances also couldn’t be more disparate.

The tie that binds them is an obsession with collecting. The main character in both books is a collector who is fixated beyond reason with obtaining the objects of his desire.

It’s difficult to accept the facts of The Art Thief. Between 1995 and 2001, a young man named Stéphane Breitwieser casually slipped into 172 European museums in broad daylight and left just as easily with 239 works of art.

He never sold one piece. He simply took them to his mother’s house, up to the attic, where he also lived. Here he had the joy of looking at them. In his own mind, perhaps, he was a pure collector, interested not in selling the works but in possessing them.

Finkel does a marvelous job of telling this story straightforwardly from start to finish. It’s both this simplicity as well as the writing that make the book deeply engaging.

The Volcano Lover is a longer, richly detailed story, highlighting the consummate collector British Envoy Sir William Hamilton, who dedicates most of his life in Naples (1764-98) to collecting objects of beauty. He is particularly obsessed with the vases of Italy and elsewhere, becoming a most famous collector held in high regard.

The other significant character in the novel is Mt. Vesuvius, the active volcano that dominates Naples’ coastal landscape as well as the lives of the Neapolitans in its menacing shadow.

The outstanding feature of the novel is, of course, the descriptive atmosphere Sontag provides with her precision prose.

The Predicament by William Boyd
Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd
I find it impossible not to be thoroughly engaged by a William Boyd novel. You sense that each of his books was as smoothly and easily written as it is to read. Of course that cannot be true, as we know authors spend hours mulling over their words. Their editors and copyeditors give equal blood, sweat, and tears to the final product.

Boyd’s subject matter varies widely, but never the quality of his writing. In these two diverse selections, one is set at a research facility in Africa and the other is a political detective thriller spanning the globe.

The Predicament is the second novel in Boyd’s Gabriel Dax trilogy. British Dax is a travel writer who finds himself caught up in the midst of some rather dicey situations. This gem takes us from Guatemala to Berlin and the US. You don’t have to be an espionage fan to become engaged in Dax’s adventures. The novels are more about the human condition, focusing on human reaction more than complex plotlines.

The first in this trilogy is Gabriel’s Moon, and the third, Cold Sunset, is already published in the UK and scheduled for US release in November. Fans, including yours truly, are eagerly anticipating it.

Brazzaville Beach is definitely not a lighthearted beach story. In fact it’s quite the opposite. This serious novel draws in part on Jane Goodall’s research in Africa.

Its main character, Hope, is studying the behavior patterns of chimpanzees and is not always in tune with her colleagues’ assumptions. Hope also is dealing with conflict from her husband on the home front.

More of my best books of the year to be continued in the December 2026 issues (both Huatulco and San Miguel de Allende editions) of The Eye.

Carole Reedy has been writing for The Eye since 2011. She is an avid reader who has made Mexico her home for many years.