Autumn 2026 – Dorien van gerven – The Things we never say

Elizabeth Strout’s latest, The Things We Never Say, came to me through an extra special, personal channel; my mother read it, would not stop talking about it, and subsequently read every novel in Strout’s bibliography. She was evidently not the only one enchanted by the book, as it was shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. Though I usually take her suggestions with a grain of salt (no doubt a leftover from my teenage years: “I’m too cool to read whatever you read!”), I decided to give The Things a try. I was introduced to Artie Dam, a history teacher in Massachusetts who seems to have a relatively “accomplished” life; married (although whether happily or not remains to be seen), with a fulfilling job in which he inspires his students, although not everything is as it seems.

In an interview for the Booker, Strout says that part of the inspiration for The Things came from a man whose obituary, according to Strout, haunted her because “he looked so entirely ordinary and pleasant.” Death plays a significant role in The Things; Despite Artie’s “ordinary and pleasant” career and personal life, he secretly deals with feelings of isolation, and even suicidal ideation, brought on by what he perceives to be a lack of “real” contact. “Why does nobody ever say anything real?” Artie asks his wife Evie after the umpteenth bland dinner party at a friend’s house. However, Artie undergoes a change in his thinking after he has a near-fatal accident on his boat.

Artie’s rehabilitation from the accident, as well as the conversations with friends and family that follow it, expertly show Strout’s ability to write about the “real.” From small conversations between Artie and his wife Evie to inward reflections Artie has at night about his distant father — these scenes are especially strong because they are so universally relevant. Who does not wish that they had asked their parents more questions when they had the chance? Putting this relatable sentiment into writing sets Strout up to do two things very well in this novel. First, it makes Artie feel like a fleshed-out character, as well as a person we deeply identify with. He verbalises our fears about family, work, friends, and politics (I will take a critical look at that later). Furthermore, it introduces into the consciousness of this recognisable figure the idea of the importance of connection through one defining event: the accident with Artie’s boat. The rest of the novel is dedicated to setting up and executing little moments of human interaction.

A stellar example of these instances of connection Artie has is the leitmotif (a fitting term here) of Francesca, Rob’s girlfriend, and her piano playing. Rob is Artie’s son, and after he grows up and moves out of his childhood home, he and his father gradually lose contact until Artie’s accident. As Artie reconnects with Rob, he also bonds with Francesca through their love for music and her desire to be “inside the music.” In the end, Artie composes a song for Rob, “and also for the world.” Francesca plays his own piece back to him, only now “the piece ha[s] a grandness to it.” Afterwards, Artie and Francesca share a wonderfully intimate moment:

But as she rose and walked toward the kitchen, she put her finger in her mouth to indicate a secret, and she said very softly, “I’m looking for God when I play.”

Artie found that to be astounding. “Do you find him?” he asked.

She winked. “Sometimes.”

Strout finds many ways to incorporate moments like this into her novel, including various instances of minds, hearts, connecting through the many things that make us human, chief among which is our love for the arts.

However, these varied, believable connections Artie builds do not extend to children. I have to hand it to Strout: as someone who works with high schoolers myself, having a “meaningful” conversation with them is extremely difficult. Children deflect and stray off topic; they are extremely open about some issues and completely shut you out with others. These inconsistencies are what make kids kids. Strout’s solution, however, leaves much to be desired. At best, the students Artie teaches are blatant stereotypes, cardboard cutouts of what the average adult who does not interact much with children would imagine them to be like; see Tamera, the “loudmouth” student whose entire demeanour changes in the span of one conversation:

Tamera raised her hand. “I’d like to work with little kids,” she said. “I don’t want to be a teacher. Sorry. But I’d like to do something with little kids.”

“Okay, Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Like being a pediatric nurse?”

Tamera’s eyes got big. “Really? Oh my God, that would be so cool.”

This conversation makes no sense. Tamera has up until this point shown no respect for Artie’s authority in the classroom. There is no indication that she would care about Artie’s opinion on her future job. On top of that, she has clearly spent time imagining working with children enough to the point that she even knows specifically to narrow it down to “little” kids. Still, Strout needs Artie to be the person to tell her dream to her, forgoing any meaningful arc or characterisation of Tamera in the process.

This is the crux of what seems to me the biggest flaw in Strout’s latest work; at worst, the children in The Things read like tiny flat robots trapped in children’s bodies, who desperately need Artie to tell them what they’re worth, and preferably also prophetically tell them what they will end up doing in the future. Danny Marino is the worst offender in this regard. Although his stories mirror that of Tamera (a sad childhood followed by a magical realisation that he can be anything he wants to be after a few conversations with Artie), the novel keeps driving the point home over, and over, and over:

Danny sort of laughed. “I mean, I’m this jock. I’m not going to say I think about Shakespeare all the time.”

(…)

“Teach it. Get other people as excited about Shakespeare as you are.”

“Me teach Shakespeare?”

“Yes.”

Two bright pink spots had been growing on Danny’s cheeks. He looked down and said, “My father wants me to go into business with him.” Danny added, “He owns a plumbing business.”

“Does your father love you?”

“Yeah, yeah, he does. He does.” Danny nodded.

“Then he’ll understand. You go do this, Danny.”

The red splotches on Danny’s face increased.

The message is clear, of course: verbalise the nice thoughts you have about people around you, especially young people who are still searching. This does not negate the fact that the novel spends considerable time building up the character of Danny only to have him, in some of his final appearances, reduced to a cliché, a storyline that has been done better, and with more catchy songs, in High School Musical. To add insult to injury, Artie will end up having a terribly similar conversation with yet another student, Rhonda Lazarre.

The friction in the chapters involving the students is the flawlessness and consistency with which Artie pokes through their armour and exposes their hopes and dreams in an almost machine-like way. Although Artie’s personal life feels realistic, fragmented, and complicated, his guidance with the students almost seems to want to diminish the book’s overall message: “So blind we humans are–so blind. To each other and to ourselves, moving through life as though through shadows, putting out a hand in the dark and thinking we have touched someone. And maybe we have.” Lucky for us, we never have to guess whether Artie formed a connection with one of his students, because Strout lets us know every time.

Still, the little moments of connection throughout this novel are largely realistic and touching. Describing what “happens” is difficult because Artie’s arc and the relationships he harbours with the people around him, especially his family, are accumulated through a series of short, grounded conversations, ranging from existential topics to little bits of news Artie and his wife share with one another. Artie re-evaluates his values, his relationships, his beliefs, all because of one accident that could happen to any of us. The rest of the novel is more a series of domestic conversations and observations, rather than a novel with actions and a plot. Strout’s book is an excellent piece of writing that shows that life truly is what you make of it.

Nevertheless, it would be a disservice to The Things to say that no influential events take place. In an interesting split from her previous work, Strout incorporates the “current” (read: slightly aged) political climate into the novel through repeated mention of the looming US 2024 presidential election. Because this political undertone is largely rendered through characters and, as mentioned earlier, Strout’s (adult) character work is impeccable, the novel does an admirable job of accurately describing the dread felt by many leading up to the election, as well as the widening divide between democrats and republicans. Artie’s relationship with Rob, who works for a security agency and is increasingly worried about the current state of America, is especially touching in this regard. Unfortunately, the effect of Strout’s looming election is often negated by how dated it feels, even just two years after the election in question. As fellow novelist Maggie Shipstead mentions in her review of The Things, a page in the middle of the book simply states: “The election came and went. Half of the country was stunned, the other half jubilant.” Shipstead comments: “Not untrue, but is such an obvious observation worth making?” I have to agree. The Things desperately tries to tie Artie’s arc and his moments of human contact to current events but focuses too heavily on one specific event (the election) rather than on ongoing sources of injustice and fear for American citizens, at times leaving the novel stuck in 2024.

Still, Strout manages to get the message across beautifully despite the questionable timeliness. In what is arguably the most impactful paragraph of the novel, she writes:

‘Why don’t people ever say anything real?’

And now he knew why. Because to say anything real was to say things that nobody wanted to know. Or if they wanted to know, they would not care in the right way. Or even understand.

It was a private thing, to be alive. He understood this now.

What is said, as well as what is unsaid, can have tremendous effects on the lives of people around us, and Strout shows us variations of perception and connection in all its messiness and versions.

The final chapters of The Things are especially apt for re-reading, as their surface reading is a bleak surprise compared to the steady positive change that we have seen in Artie up until that point. Artie grows increasingly mentally and physically unwell after the election and with the start of Trump’s presidency (or, at times, because of the new political situation), up until his death just a few years later. Strout fantastically toes the line between recording Artie’s decline, while keeping alive the messages of connection and hope that have pervaded the novel thus far. When Artie dies of heart failure and his friends, students, and family gather at the coffin, the reader is not met with grief and hopelessness, as might be expected, but rather with a legacy to the journey Artie has gone through mentally; Danny and Rhonda are present, and Francesca plays Artie’s piece, much to the enjoyment of Danny, who “was briefly transported into a moment of comfort.” In short, the funeral is not the end, but rather the start of something new. The many chapters in which Strout has been carefully weaving connections come to a head. Even though I might not have liked this book as much as my mother, I can appreciate the lesson it tries to teach, and I will cherish the good conversations me and her have had about it. And was that not, in a way, Strout’s goal all along? Read novels, listen to music, produce art, and please, for the love of God, talk to someone about it.