The Things We Never Say
A poignant meditation on loneliness, friendship, parenthood, and the importance of truth in a capsizing world.
Excerpt:
It was the middle of June and the sun all day had kept right on shining with sweet mightiness. “Stay jovial, please, Artie! Just promise me that. Please stay your old jovial self!” Flossie MacDonald had wiped her napkin across her weeping eyes and told this to Artie Dam the last time she had seen him, which had been on this spectacular evening in June. And he assured her that he would.
They had gone to Spud’s Bar and Grille, the place near Artie’s house that was right there on the water on the coast of Massachusetts; the bay, seen through the windows, was calm, and many boats sat there quietly, sailboats and fishing boats and boats large enough to sleep eight people.
May 05, 2026
Hardcover | ebook | audiobook
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 —a nd 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.
EXTras to Download
“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.”
“Strout’s masterful novel poses searching questions, yet ultimately gives readers hope.”
“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.’”
“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.
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“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.”
“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.”
“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.”