What We Don’t Say About Elizabeth Strout – readers will enjoy these new characters | Fiction

The is an American writer Elizabeth Strout he worked hard all these years to refuse to publish his first book at the age of 40, and his efforts have definitely paid off. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009, and has been nominated several times for the Booker and Women’s Prizes. What We Don’t Say is his 11th book.

Strout, who grew up in Maine and New Hampshire, writes primarily about small-town America and its predominantly white, working-class population. He is interested in the minutiae of ordinary life: people’s joys and sorrows, marriages and infidelities, and the lasting effects of trauma. The fictional world of Strout’s novel often extends to the following books: Olive Kitteridge, published in 2008, followed by Olive, again in 2019; people who were first seen in his 2016 book My name is Lucy Barton he reappeared inside O William! in 2021 and Lucy by the Sea in 2022. Tell Me Everything. He wrote about the fictional world in books and stories that readers often consider as their friends.

But Things We Don’t Say, which takes readers to the Massachusetts seaside, is famous for bringing in new characters. Artie Dam, a history teacher at the local high school, is the main character. He is 57 years old, funny and kind, loved by his students. He is perhaps a little silly, with his white socks and “old black shoes”; one of his friends secretly invited him”approximately bad”.

Artie’s family didn’t have much money when he was growing up. His father worked as a simple housekeeper, and his mother suffered from mental illness that meant she was sometimes taken to a public hospital. But things have changed for Artie: he and his wife, Evie, now own a large house on a private road. And it’s near the lake: Artie drives his boat offshore on weekends.

Although he has a happy life on the outside, Artie is struggling in secret. At home, he feels very disconnected from Evie. Artie knows that their differences in class are part of what comes between them. “This happened all the time, people got married high or low. His wife was married, and he was married.” But he can’t express his thoughts. He finds their mansion – inherited from his rich family – extravagant, and even after 30 years he still can’t believe he lives there. Today, every time he wants to talk to his wife, he can say that he is not interested, and he feels that “sadness comes back to him”.

They trace the growing conflict between them to a car accident 10 years earlier. Their son Rob, 17 at the time, was driving, and may have been at fault: he survived the crash, but his friend, in the passenger seat, was killed. From then on, the family must “rehabilitate”. Evie also trained as a family support worker and put herself into work. Rob managed to make it – he went to MIT, became a programmer – but since the accident, he’s been quiet and withdrawn. Strout writes that “every time Artie saw him, Artie’s heart broke a little”.

And that’s not all. It feels to Artie like the whole world is changing in ways he can’t understand. His students have been very worried since the outbreak. He admits that he is afraid, not knowing what he is afraid of. And the upcoming election of 2024 fills Artie with dread: it makes him feel “as if a noose were hanging every day around his neck”.

As Artie’s loneliness and depression threaten to overtake him, a long-held secret is revealed. He finds himself grappling, casually, with existential dilemmas: is there free will in the world? What if there is none? That he does not choose the answer is not the point. Strout asks himself a question, and asks us to think alongside him: How are our decisions shaped, or predetermined, by our circumstances in life?

Readers will enjoy the discovery of a new fictional world surrounding Artie Dam, and the possibilities that lie ahead. What about Evie, with the “deep and sudden sadness” she’s had since Rob’s accident? What about Rob himself, and the “unbearable shame” he lives with? What about the English teacher, Anne Merrill, who has a “little crush” on Artie? There is so much here to explore, so many endless mysteries of humanity. Let’s hope that this good writer will continue slowly on his way, telling his loyal readers story after story, gift after gift.