Review | Elizabeth Strout’s ‘The Things We Never Say’ is an elegy for the ordinary

2026 Booker Prize-Shortlisted For all his belovedness, Arthur Dam, the protagonist of Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, The Things We Never Say, is not Lucy Barton — a recurring character in Strout books. There is no reason he should be, it is just a handicap of readers who look for the traits of a favourite character in every other protagonist of the writer. There is, however, the familiar underlying niceness that Strout characters just cannot seem to escape.

The Booker-shortlisted author has managed to release another helplessly adorable middle-aged man into a world where the smallest details create lasting impressions and endearments float around like a much-needed decanter. Arthur, or Artie, is, of course, a high- school teacher — what else could he be with all that concern he harbours for the world? It fits that Artie is there to part with the history he knew of the world and open the door just a bit wider for his curious lot of 16-year-olds.

He is in his late 50s and lives in Massachusetts with his wife of decades, Evie, a therapist.