I love Elizabeth Strout novels – my favourite is Olive Kitteridge, so I pre-ordered this one.
Here’s the blurb …
Artie Dam is a man with a secret. He spends his days teaching history to high schoolers, 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 neighbours, 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.
With exquisite prose and profound insight, Elizabeth Strout captures the way grief reverberates through decades, the comfort found in deep friendships and the freedom that comes when we break free of our secrets. The Things We Never Say is a stunning new novel from one of our most acclaimed observers of the human heart.
Artie is a good guy in a world gone mad – the election is looming in the US, is it possible that ‘that man’ will be re-elected? He thinks he wants to be gone, but not in a way that would be distressing for others. Then there is a boating incident and he realises that he, in fact, wants to live (this is not the secret). He has a profound impact on two of his students, and develops a relationship with the man who saved him from drowning, is close to his son, but distant from his wife. He is a good man trying to navigate his way in the world – the new principal chastises him for saying ‘boys and girls’ (it’s demeaning and some might not identify as boy or girl).
The dialogue is fabulous – very natural sounding.
I think it would be nice to get this story again, but from Evie’s point of view. Let’s just say the reader (or this reader) doesn’t warm to her.
A review
