BOOK REVIEW: THE THINGS WE NEVER SAY By Elizabeth Strout (Penguin/Viking, 2026)
Elizabeth Strout has always written about the quiet lives of characters like Olive Kitteridge or Lucy Barton, lives that are not as ordinary as they seem. Her most recent book The Things We Never Say, shortlisted for the 2026 Booker prize, is no exception. Its protagonist, Artie Dam, is a middle-aged schoolteacher living a fairly normal, respectable life on the Massachusetts Bay with his wife Evie, a grown-up son, friends and a community of like-minded people. But underneath this veneer of respectability and contentment, the mild-mannered Artie is plagued by a strong feeling of isolation. He feels a growing sense of detachment from the present, and a lingering sense of depression. What disturbs him most is his lack of knowledge of everyone around him, and their lack of knowledge of him. This is the profound question Strout, through Artie, poses for the reader. Do we actually know each other? Artie feels a sense of alienation from his life, including from his wife and their son. And it's not just a sense of aloofness at home; he also notices a growing anxiousness among his students since the pandemic, and in the way the country and its politics is changing around him. With all this in mind, Artie considers taking his own life, but when he nearly dies in a freak boating incident, he reemerges wanting to engage with, understand, and enjoy the life he has been given. It is in this next, uplifted phase that he unravels a family secret which changes everything, and Artie must reconsider not just relationships within the home but his own existence.
I have always been a great admirer of Strout's writing. From Olive Kitteridge to Lucy Barton, her characters linger, in their various reiterations, living their imaginary lives alongside our own. Strout writes with her quintessential ease that makes her world so accessible. She allows quiet lives to unravel, and this is what makes her writing so brilliant. I was as excited to meet this new host of characters as I've been to meet her earlier ones. The novel is written in the beautiful, quiet, simple prose Strout is best known for, although I did find the voice flat, lacking in nuance and emotion, in the first part of the book. Even so, Strout remains a great observer of the human condition. She has the gift of taking the utmost ordinary and making it unique. She deals exquisitely with grief and longing and confusion and the repression of her male protagonist, reminds us of a similar emotional crisis to Olive Kitteridge's husband.
The Things We Never Say is Strout engaging with the world outside the quotidian of the everyday. She draws attention to how larger political events and changes have repercussions on even the quietest and most ordinary existence. This is a self-assured and intrepid tale, told with a quiet exactitude, and we have learnt to expect nothing less from Strout.
THE THINGS WE NEVER SAY by Elizabeth Strout (Penguin/Viking, 2026)