The Things We Never Say (2026) - Elizabeth Strout

 

The Things We Never Say is Elizabeth Strout’s first standalone novel since The Burgess Boys was published in 2013. Going back to 1998, the year in which her first novel was published, this is Stout's eleventh novel overall, and just her fourth standalone.

“For Artie it was as though he had lived these many years looking at things from one angle, and now it was as though someone had turned him partly in a different direction and everything - everything - looked different."

Artie Dam is the kind of high school history teacher who is remembered by former students for decades. Artie has everything going for him. On the surface at least, Artie has settled down into the kind of steady life that others can only aspire to. He’s been married to the same woman for decades, loves his teaching job and his students, has a grown son who seems to be doing well, and is often found solo-sailing his own boat out on the bay near his home. 

But Artie Dam, surrounded by friends and family though he might be, is a deeply lonely man who feels that he really doesn’t know even the people closest to him, and truth be known, Artie even feels a little bit suicidal at times. Then even that uncomfortable world gets turned upside down on Artie after he learns a deeply buried family secret that further convinces him that no one ever really knows anyone else. The final straw for Artie comes with the 2024 election. He dreads the election as it approaches, and when it’s over he’s left with the feeling that everything familiar to him is slipping away.

In the end, Artie figures out that being alive is a “private thing” for all of us, that our real pains, truths, and thoughts are things that no one else will ever fully be able to understand or even have access to. This is a novel about loneliness, communication, and connection, and Strout leaves the reader with a lot to think about despite how short, at only 220 pages, The Things We Never Say is. 

This is another beautifully written Elizabeth Strout novel, but it is not destined to be one of my favorites of hers mainly, I suppose, because the way that Artie and, with one exception, everyone around him reacts to the 2024 election does not feel realistic to me. I found it hard to believe how deeply obsessed and self-destructive the people in Artie’s life allowed themselves to become immediately upon announcement of the official results. For me, it feels a little heavy handed even as a literary device. That said, The Things We Never Say is an Elizabeth Strout novel, and Elizabeth Strout proved a long time ago that she is incapable of writing a bad novel.