“We all have huge blind spots in front of our eyes, in the sense that despite everything we think we know, we can never truly understand how others see us. And this was true for Artie Dam as well”. (pp. 18-19)
Artie, the “Arci-prof”, has been named Professor of the Year, is married to a woman he loves, Evie, and the two live in a large, affluent seaside residence that Evie’s family left to them.
Now that their son Rob, an engineer at MIT, is away forging his own path, Artie has more time to devote to his passion for sailing during the hours he does not spend at the school.
A serene life, on the surface, and it is precisely because of this impression that the words arrive like a bolt from the blue:
“Here’s Artie’s secret: for more than two months he’d been thinking about how to kill himself without his wife, his son (or his students) knowing that he had done it.” (p. 15)
Elizabeth Strout, an American writer of well-deserved renown, enters the Booker Prize 2026 shortlist with The Things We Don’t Say (in Italy published by Einaudi with the excellent translation by Susanna Basso). From the title and the apt Jungian epigraph, the central theme of this novel is clear: the immense loneliness one can feel while surrounded by others, even because of secrets that cannot be shared. Like Artie’s biting confession: “I didn’t want to die, I simply didn’t want to go on living” (p. 45).
The Immense Loneliness One Can Feel in the Midst of Others
What drives this dissatisfaction? Which secrets undermine the relationship with his wife? Evie and Artie have faced incredibly difficult moments, such as the grave consequences of an accident in which their son Rob, at the wheel, witnessed the death of his girlfriend at the time. Tightening their shoulders and confronting the pain, the legal consequences, but also the anger of the girl’s parents, have always been one and the same experience.
But daily life, too, has always been about sharing: from Artie’s school days to Evie’s loquacious presence (p. 123) as a family therapist passionate about her work.
Why Doesn’t Evie Notice Artie’s Suffering?
Then how could Evie fail to perceive Artie’s pain, to the point that he watches her speak, absorbed in the conversation, unaware of his thoughts? Perhaps the issue is that Artie has always sought to reassure everyone, to avoid generating worries.
But he is not the serene man he appears to be: for instance, he harbours great concern for the upcoming presidential elections (much of the story is set three years after Covid, and, although Strout never explicitly names the elections or the future president, it is obvious which elections and which future president are being referred to).
School Has Also Changed
Or rather: the school has changed, the students have other fragilities and new needs to understand at depth. If you combine the disoriented adolescents, seeking points of reference, with the prevailing political ideology, you understand how classroom life fills with anguish for Artie, who, teaching History, had always tried to lead high school students to think critically about the present as well. And now, despite the Principal’s wishes, there are intrusions into the teaching itself.
Moreover, Artie no longer has his old friend Flossie MacDonald with whom to vent (indeed, in the opening pages of the book, the woman leaves to be closer to her daughter). He has nothing left but to feel like “a pile of loneliness” (p. 26).
A Discovery That Undermines the Very Structure of the Family…
To increase daily discomfort, Strout, a master at showing how a single secret can destroy certainties and destabilize bonds, slips in a shattering discovery. A discovery that undermines the very structure of the family:
“And then he thought: We’ve always sat here, with this enormous, silent thing between us. Only before, it wasn’t there, because he had never known it. But Evie did. Night after night for twenty-eight years she had known that thing […]. In any case, that became the part of life in which Artie lied to his wife. He lied by omission, but consistently.” (p. 98)
Where this secret leads, whether Artie can overcome the disappointment, are only some of the tests that animate the novel and leave readers curious to discover more.
Strout’s Extraordinary Talent for Moving Through Time
Above all, what dominates is Strout’s extraordinary ability to move through time, constructing a narrative and descriptive frames where nothing is left to chance. With her clean, essential style, she sketches a whole world where the absence of important details is never felt: in the choice of what and how to write, in the selection of white spaces and the juxtaposition of scenes, a solid, convincing structure is built.
Nothing is left to chance. And so we settle into two hundred pages of Artie’s life, which is also a bit ours, and it is impossible to close The Things We Don’t Say without feeling understood in some ways and urged to look inside ourselves without delay.
