Elizabeth Strout’s elegantly-written new novel, The Things We Never Say, centers on the modest, likable 57-year-old character, Artie Dam, an award-winning history teacher respected and well-liked in the community. His approach to teaching is creative and, though he tells himself he is not very smart, he uses the Socratic method brilliantly, and he also teaches from primary sources: the students learn about the Civil War by reading letters written by soldiers and nurses during the war.
But he also creates a mini-society in the classroom: he emphasizes the need to respect others, and he does not tolerate casual cruelties. He kicks a boy out of class for using the word “faggoty” to describe the pillow case where Artie stores students’ phones. (No phones are allowed in his classroom.)
As usual, Strout’s prose is lyrical and exquisite. She is always thoughtful, but this time around she has also written a dark political novel. It begins in 2024, right before the election, and the small town in Massachusetts is so divided between Trump and Harris that a fight breaks out at a school sporting event..
But this isn’t “Mr. Chips in Massachusetts”: it is a novel about politics, and Artie’s increasing depression mirrors the political scene. No one understands he is depressed, not only by politics but the tragedies in his family’s past. Somehow the two threads become intertwined, and he begins to plan his suicide. He believes it would be easiest to stage a sailing accident, but instead nearly drowns in an unintentional boating accident. And so he is relieved and happy to be alive, for a while at least, and befriends the Trump supporter who rescued him.
The theme of suicide is never abandoned, though. Artie observes at one point that society is “committing mass suicide.” Later, a minor character commits suicide, in part because the changes in education make it impossible to do his job. And a rich neighbor’s mother attempts suicide in Florida.
Strout’s gruesome account and analysis of the political changes in the last two years are as thorough as anything in a newspaper, and it is so well-written that I would not be surprised if it were nominated for the Booker Prize. But for me, it makes for grim reading, and I much prefer the Lucy Barton books, which are dark in a more personal way. I prefer the personal to the political, even when they are all mixed up. The Things We Never Say may be the grimmest novel I read this year unless I elect to read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a fictional account of the meat-packing industry.
