The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout: ‘No one is superior to anyone else in this world’  

As Elizabeth Strout fans will already know, The Things We Never Say is a standalone novel set in a small Massachusetts town rather than Crosby, Maine with which we’ve become so familiar. Spanning several years either side of the 2024 presidential election, it follows Artie Dam, a popular high school history teacher whose life is upended by a revelation.

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.

At the beginning of each school year, Artie asks his students to write a two-page essay on anything they feel passionate about as a way of getting to know them. He’s the kind of teacher who has an affectionate nickname; even the most reluctant become enthused by his lessons on the Civil War. Beloved by both students and staff, apparently happily married to Evie, Artie finds himself weighed down by a sense of dread, losing track of a reason to live until an almost fatal sailing accident brings him up short and delivers a new friend. When a revelation by his son shakes him to his core, it’s Ken he turns to rather than Evie, finding a way to restore a kind of equilibrium and a closeness to his son. Undermining this newfound possibility of hope is the election of a president whose actions are the antithesis of Artie’s values. Appalled at the scenes playing out in his country, Artie notices the ebbing of kindness and respect amongst his students and fellow citizens.

The election came and went. Half of the country was stunned, the other half jubilant. 

Written with her characteristic quietly perceptive acuity, Strout’s slim novel is populated with smartly observed characters seen through Artie’s eyes as he contemplates how well we can know each other, the importance of honesty and watches what is happening in his country with increasing dread. In contrast to Evie’s wealthy parents, Artie’s struggled to keep afloat, his mother twice hospitalised with psychosis. He and Evie have dealt with the tragedy of their son’s teenage accident which resulted in the death of his girlfriend, in very different ways – she’s no longer the warm person he remembers. For Artie, kindness, social justice and respect are paramount, qualities he hopes to promote in his students, two of whose lives he will shape without realising it, but such qualities won’t wash in the post-election world. Those fans accustomed to Crosby characters popping up will appreciate the glancing mention of Evie’s book club’s choice about ‘a crotchety old woman from Maine’ but this is very much a standalone novel. A thought-provoking, heartfelt piece of fiction, certainly Strout’s most overtly political and understandably so.

Viking: London ‎9780241814307 224 pages Hardback (read via NetGalley)