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The American author Elizabeth Strout famously persisted throughout years of rejection to publish her first novel when she was in her 40s, and the hard work has certainly paid off. She won a Pulitzer prize in 2009, and has been nominated multiple times for the Booker and Women’s prizes. The Things We Never Say is her 11th book.
Strout, who grew up in Maine and New Hampshire, writes mainly about small-town America and the mostly white, working-class people who inhabit it. She’s interested in the small details of ordinary lives: people’s joys and disappointments, marriages and infidelities, and the lasting effects of trauma. The fictional world of a Strout novel often extends into subsequent companion works: Olive Kitteridge, published in 2008, was followed by Olive, Again in 2019; the characters first seen in her 2016 novel My Name Is Lucy Barton reappeared in Oh William! in 2021 and Lucy by the Sea in 2022. In 2024, Strout took this world‑building to another level when Lucy, Olive and other recurring characters were brought together in Tell Me Everything. She has charted her fictional worlds so extensively across interlinked novels and stories that readers often think of her characters as their personal friends.
But The Things We Never Say, which takes readers to coastal Massachusetts, is notable for introducing a fresh cast of characters. Artie Dam, a history teacher at the local high school, is centre stage. He’s 57, funny and kind, beloved by his students. He’s maybe a little goofy, with his white socks and his “old man black sneakers”; one of his friends secretly calls him “almost dopey”.
Artie’s family didn’t have a lot of money when he was growing up. His father worked as a general handyman-supervisor for a modest set of apartment buildings, and his mother suffered from psychotic episodes that meant she was sometimes taken away to the state hospital. But Artie’s circumstances have changed: he and his wife, Evie, now have a spacious home on a private road. And it’s right by the ocean: Artie sails his boat out in the bay at weekends.
Despite an outwardly happy life, Artie is secretly struggling. At home, he feels increasingly disconnected from Evie. Artie knows that their class difference is part of what comes between them. “This happened all the time, people married up or down. His wife had married down, and he had married up.” But he’s not able to rationalise his feelings away. He finds their big fancy house – inherited from her wealthy family – ostentatious, and even after 30 years can still hardly believe he lives there. These days, whenever he tries to talk to his wife, he can tell she’s not interested, and he feels “a dismalness return to him”.
He traces the growing rift between them to a car accident 10 years earlier. Their son Rob, aged 17 at the time, was driving, and was possibly at fault: he survived the crash, but his girlfriend, in the passenger seat, was killed. Since then, the family has had to “reconfigure”. Evie retrained as a family therapist and buried herself in work. Rob managed to make a success of himself – he went to MIT, became a software developer – but ever since the accident, he’s been quiet and withdrawn. Strout writes that “every time Artie saw him, Artie’s heart broke a little more”.
And that’s not all. It feels to Artie as if the whole world is changing in ways he can’t understand. His students have grown more anxious since the pandemic. They admit to being scared, without knowing what they’re scared of. And the upcoming 2024 election fills Artie with dread: it makes him feel “as if a noose was tightening each day around his neck”.
Just as Artie’s loneliness and bewilderment threaten to overtake him, a long-held secret is revealed. He finds himself clutching, somewhat randomly, at an existential conundrum: is there any free will in the world? What if there isn’t? That he never decides on an answer isn’t the point. Strout is posing a question to herself, and inviting us to consider it alongside her: to what extent are our choices shaped, or even predetermined, by our circumstances in life?
Readers will delight in the discovery of this new fictional world around Artie Dam, and the possibilities that lie ahead. What of Evie, and the “deep and sudden pockets of grief” she has felt since Rob’s accident? What of Rob himself, and the “unbearable shame” he lives with? What of the English teacher, Anne Merrill, who is “a little bit in love” with Artie? There is so much here to explore, so many endless human mysteries. Let’s hope that this fine author continues steadily along her path, delivering unto her loyal readers story upon story, gift upon gift.
English (US)