Top of the class

American Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout is a master at excavating the extraordinary from the lives of ordinary people.

Strout’s specialty is creating characters that her readers feel like they know in real life. The two best known are the irascible Olive Kitteridge (rendered perfectly by Frances McDormand in the HBO series) and Lucy Barton of My Name is Lucy Barton, who struggles to put poverty, COVID and two husbands behind her to make it as a big-city writer.

Strout’s fiction is primarily set in rural American towns (usually in Maine or the Midwest) and is preoccupied with family secrets, small-town gossip and the kind of quiet grief that rips apart families. Her characters are governed by rigid social boundaries that shape and isolate them.

The Things We Never Say leaves her previous set of characters behind. This book offers a fresh perspective, introducing 57-year-old Artie Dam, a much-loved high school teacher from Massachusetts, nicknamed “Damn Dam” by his students.

On the surface, Artie has it all. He’s married to Evie, a woman of considerable status, and they live in a mansion with a glorious ocean view. Artie goes sailing on weekends, and his idea of rebellion is to wear white socks with black sneakers.

But something is missing. Artie struggles with a deep sense of disconnection from the world around him.

Only his students save him, about whom Artie says, “I could have wept at unadulterated love for them.” Despite this, he makes the decision to end his life. Then he accidentally slips off his boat and nearly dies, which resuscitates his will to live.

Halfway through Strout’s novel, the reader receives a large clue as to why Artie’s marriage is so empty. Evie has been keeping a whopper of a secret from him for as long as they have been married.

In one riveting scene, Artie drives several towns away to buy a new dress shirt and, on the spur of the moment, decides to shoplift two more. When an alarm goes off, he is utterly bewildered that he has done this. The shop owner conducts a police check and discovers Artie is a former teacher of the year with no criminal record, and lets him go. The owner’s kindness moves Artie deeply. As Strout has previously observed, “People take things because they are missing something inside.”

Strout makes a point of illustrating that the kindness and connection in Artie’s world arises from his secondary relationships. Artie finds his plumber weeping on the side of a bathtub, who confesses that he has just found out that his wife has had an affair. He makes a similarly deep connection with the man who rescued him from drowning.

Although the current U.S. president is never named, he and the 2024 U.S. election cast a large shadow here. As a teacher of history, Artie is paralyzed by a sense of impending doom.

Strout is often asked whether she uses her characters as a mouthpiece for her politics, and always says no. In a recent article in the Atlantic, she responded that when she writes, “I’m trying to excavate the parts of my characters’ minds that they may not even be aware of.” This feels particularly true here, as if the manner in which the narrative is unfolding is a surprise even to her.

Loneliness is a frequent visitor to the Stroutiverse. “It was a private thing to be alive,” Artie observes. “But mostly we travel through life unsighted, grasping only the smallest details of one another’s selves, including our own. Thinking all the while, that we can see.”

Strout’s ability to capture the cadence of everyday life and dialogue is her unique gift. She struggled to initially get published, her first book released publicly at age 43. Since then, her career has fast tracked, and she has come to be considered one of the finest writers of her generation.

Regardless of whether this book earns her another Pulitzer, Artie’s story will stay with the reader long after the story is finished.

Greg Klassen is a Winnipeg writer and marketer.