Pulitzer Prize–winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Strout’s new novel tells the story of a chance incident that sparks a powerful realization in a beloved teacher’s life—a poignant meditation on loneliness, friendship, parenthood, and the importance of truth in a capsizing world
Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?
And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.
Elizabeth Strout, as we have come to expect, delivers a moving exploration of the human condition—one that brims with compassion for each and every one of her indelible characters. With exquisite prose and profound insight, The Things We Never Say takes one man’s fears and loneliness and makes them universal. And in the same breath, captures the abiding love that sustains and holds us all.
“The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist unveils a fresh setting and troupe of characters that lifts her literary game with energized prose and gimlet-eyed insights.”—TIME
“Strout masterfully explores her central themes (after a ‘lunatic’ former president is reelected, a clear reference to Trump, Artie feels like the ‘country was committing suicide’) and offers timeless observations, suggesting, for example, that her characters feel distant from those they love most because ‘to say anything real was to say things that nobody wanted to know.’”—Publishers Weekly
“’I wonder why people never say anything real,’ Artie Dam says to his wife after a party. The longtime, very beloved high school teacher is unaccountably lonely, a feeling that’s exacerbated when a secret about his family comes to light. It throws his world upside down and gobsmacks him with the realization of how little we know about other people (or ourselves, for that matter). ‘Mostly we travel through life unsighted,’ he notes in this beautiful tale from Strout (Olive Kitteridge), my all-time favorite author, whose books are often at least partly about how authentic human connections are made by sharing our stories.”—AARP
“We’re all familiar with the concept of being alone in a crowd. But leave it to Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout to find new dimensions to the feeling in this powerful new novel. Strout’s story follows high school teacher Artie Dam, who seems to have made a pleasant life for himself—a time-tested marriage, a large group of friends, a sailboat for goodness sake—until a revelation upends it all and makes him consider just how powerful his connections have really been.”—Town & Country
“I always know I’m in steady hands when reading Elizabeth Strout, whether it’s a Lucy Barton book, or one from another of her multiverse . . . Strout is consistent and satisfying: her writing is . . . always delightful, and illuminates the world in new, brighter colors with every book she writes.”—Literary Hub
“Strout’s decision to start fresh feels like a promise: new characters to obsess over, new quiet devastations to survive. Here, a high school teacher’s seemingly settled life is upended by a long-kept secret. Strout will always make ordinary lives feel urgent. New territory just raises the stakes.”—Oprah Daily
“Revered for her deeply empathetic and perceptive approach, Strout creates existentially complex interior worlds for seemingly simple characters . . . Tantalizingly perceptive and compassionate glimpses into the backstories of the key contributors to Artie’s crisis of the soul will give readers hope that these indelible individuals will one day appear in a trademark Strout spin-off of their own.”—Booklist, starred review
Elizabeth Strout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lucy by the Sea; Oh William!, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Olive, Again; Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize; My Name Is Lucy Barton; The Burgess Boys; Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London. She lives in Maine.
View titles by Elizabeth Strout
Pulitzer Prize–winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Strout’s new novel tells the story of a chance incident that sparks a powerful realization in a beloved teacher’s life—a poignant meditation on loneliness, friendship, parenthood, and the importance of truth in a capsizing world
Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?
And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.
Elizabeth Strout, as we have come to expect, delivers a moving exploration of the human condition—one that brims with compassion for each and every one of her indelible characters. With exquisite prose and profound insight, The Things We Never Say takes one man’s fears and loneliness and makes them universal. And in the same breath, captures the abiding love that sustains and holds us all.
Praise
“The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist unveils a fresh setting and troupe of characters that lifts her literary game with energized prose and gimlet-eyed insights.”—TIME
“Strout masterfully explores her central themes (after a ‘lunatic’ former president is reelected, a clear reference to Trump, Artie feels like the ‘country was committing suicide’) and offers timeless observations, suggesting, for example, that her characters feel distant from those they love most because ‘to say anything real was to say things that nobody wanted to know.’”—Publishers Weekly
“’I wonder why people never say anything real,’ Artie Dam says to his wife after a party. The longtime, very beloved high school teacher is unaccountably lonely, a feeling that’s exacerbated when a secret about his family comes to light. It throws his world upside down and gobsmacks him with the realization of how little we know about other people (or ourselves, for that matter). ‘Mostly we travel through life unsighted,’ he notes in this beautiful tale from Strout (Olive Kitteridge), my all-time favorite author, whose books are often at least partly about how authentic human connections are made by sharing our stories.”—AARP
“We’re all familiar with the concept of being alone in a crowd. But leave it to Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout to find new dimensions to the feeling in this powerful new novel. Strout’s story follows high school teacher Artie Dam, who seems to have made a pleasant life for himself—a time-tested marriage, a large group of friends, a sailboat for goodness sake—until a revelation upends it all and makes him consider just how powerful his connections have really been.”—Town & Country
“I always know I’m in steady hands when reading Elizabeth Strout, whether it’s a Lucy Barton book, or one from another of her multiverse . . . Strout is consistent and satisfying: her writing is . . . always delightful, and illuminates the world in new, brighter colors with every book she writes.”—Literary Hub
“Strout’s decision to start fresh feels like a promise: new characters to obsess over, new quiet devastations to survive. Here, a high school teacher’s seemingly settled life is upended by a long-kept secret. Strout will always make ordinary lives feel urgent. New territory just raises the stakes.”—Oprah Daily
“Revered for her deeply empathetic and perceptive approach, Strout creates existentially complex interior worlds for seemingly simple characters . . . Tantalizingly perceptive and compassionate glimpses into the backstories of the key contributors to Artie’s crisis of the soul will give readers hope that these indelible individuals will one day appear in a trademark Strout spin-off of their own.”—Booklist, starred review
Author
Elizabeth Strout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lucy by the Sea; Oh William!, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Olive, Again; Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize; My Name Is Lucy Barton; The Burgess Boys; Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London. She lives in Maine.
View titles by Elizabeth Strout
