Modern Fiction Lilliput Bookclub: The Things We Never Say by E. Strout

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NOTE: Due to high demand, the book is on order. ETA first week of May.

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About the book:

Brief Description:
Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, 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 neighbors, 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.

Elizabeth Strout, as we have come to expect, delivers a moving exploration of the human condition--one that brims with compassion for each and every one of her indelible characters. With exquisite prose and profound insight, The Things We Never Say takes one man's fears and loneliness and makes them universal. And in the same breath, captures the abiding love that sustains and holds us all.

"Strout's capacious empathy and rigorous attention to the nuances of human behavior and psychology are as evident as ever in The Things We Never Say. She has always been unafraid to go to the darkest places in human experience, confronting hideous abuse, unfathomable suffering, and profound despair with unflinching honesty." --The Boston Globe

"Strout has a signature ability to make me feel for her characters . . . in her careful, close observations, his depths become increasingly legible. You wish he were not experiencing this pain, but you understand where it is coming from . . . The result is a reading experience of both great warmth and great worry. I don't know anyone else doing it quite like this today." --Chicago Tribune

"This is a profound, resplendent novel that stares our present moment in the face while throwing a lifeboat to cling to in the storm." --Financial Times

"Strout develops a rich story around the distance between people who think they've fostered a certain intimacy." --Cultured

"The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist unveils a fresh setting and troupe of characters that lifts her literary game with energized prose and gimlet-eyed insights." --Time

"Strout's masterful novel poses searching questions, yet ultimately gives readers hope." --Shelf Awareness

"Strout masterfully explores her central themes (after a 'lunatic' former president is reelected, a clear reference to Trump, Artie feels like the 'country was committing suicide') and offers timeless observations, suggesting, for example, that her characters feel distant from those they love most because 'to say anything real was to say things that nobody wanted to know.'" --Publishers Weekly

"Tantalizingly perceptive and compassionate . . . Strout fans will flock to her latest, thrilled to meet new characters in her always compelling fictional universe." --Booklist, starred review

"'Mostly we travel through life unsighted, ' he notes in this beautiful tale from Strout ( Olive Kitteridge), my all-time favorite author, whose books are often at least partly about how authentic human connections are made by sharing our stories." --AARP

"We're all familiar with the concept of being alone in a crowd. But leave it to Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout to find new dimensions to the feeling in this powerful new novel." --Town & Country

"I always know I'm in steady hands when reading Elizabeth Strout, whether it's a Lucy Barton book, or one from another of her multiverse. . . . Strout is consistent and satisfying: her writing is . . . always delightful, and illuminates the world in new, brighter colors with every book she writes." --Literary Hub
"Strout's decision to start fresh feels like a promise: new characters to obsess over, new quiet devastations to survive. Here, a high school teacher's seemingly settled life is upended by a long-kept secret. Strout will always make ordinary lives feel urgent. New territory just raises the stakes." --Oprah Daily
Biographical Note:
Elizabeth Strout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tell Me Everything; Lucy by the Sea; Oh William!, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Olive, Again; Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize; My Name Is Lucy Barton; The Burgess Boys; Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London.

BYOB (there is a liquor store next door)