{"id":23270,"date":"2026-05-17T14:41:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T22:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=23270"},"modified":"2026-05-17T14:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T22:42:14","slug":"elizabeth-strouts-new-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2026\/05\/17\/elizabeth-strouts-new-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Strout&#8217;s New Book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Things We Never Say: A Novel\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"500\" height=\"550\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"clipboard-write\" style=\"max-width:100%\" src=\"https:\/\/read.amazon.com\/kp\/card?asin=B0FSQ3W7BC\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>What kind of crazy, f*cked up world do we live in where we get a better description of, understanding of, delineation of, modern society, from Covid to Trump, in a book as opposed to any other entertainment medium, even the news!<\/p>\n<p>Now at this point Elizabeth Strout is mostly known for &#8220;Olive Kitteridge,&#8221; an award-winning series on HBO, but an even better book.<\/p>\n<p>And if you dive into Strout&#8217;s work you&#8217;ll see that she&#8217;s mined the life of Olive and those in her environs in a number of books, very well I must say.<\/p>\n<p>But &#8220;The Things We Never Say&#8221; is different.<\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s different from so much of what&#8217;s out there, Strout is truly in her own lane, what we are waiting for in music, someone who uses the same tools but comes up with something totally unique.<\/p>\n<p>Strout knows the language, but she doesn&#8217;t have to let you know she does. It&#8217;s akin to a guitarist who knows it&#8217;s better to leave stuff out rather than overload you with notes to impress you with their talent. Strout disappears completely in this book, you&#8217;re enmeshed with the characters.<\/p>\n<p>Although not really.<\/p>\n<p>You see most people are jabbing hard, or pulling their punches. Can you talk about politics? Can you be friends with someone on the other side? And believe me, Strout takes sides, it&#8217;s very clear. She&#8217;s anti-Trump, she&#8217;s worried about antisemitism, and also worried about the death and destruction in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>So her beliefs are there, but the stunning thing is your beliefs are embedded inside you and most people rarely verbalize them, for fear of being labeled, misunderstood, ostracized.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s one of the main themes in &#8220;The Things We Never Say&#8221;&#8230;can anybody really know another? You can be happily married for decades, but what is truly going on inside of the other person&#8217;s brain&#8230;you don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>All these human elements are in Strout&#8217;s book.<\/p>\n<p>So it&#8217;s set on the north shore of Boston. It&#8217;s got that New England feel like the Olive Kitteridge books, but Maine is different from Massachusetts. Other than Portland, most of Maine is off the grid, whereas Boston and its environs may in some ways be provincial, but it&#8217;s an epicenter of education and research.<\/p>\n<p>So Artie, who comes from nothing, is a teacher. And he&#8217;s married to Evie, who comes from something. Evie encounters Artie in a charitable environment and she&#8217;s drawn to him, she needs to marry him. And not much more is said about her falling in love in the book, but you get it. Other works go on for pages describing the infatuation, the feelings, but in truth, much love starts with a bolt of lightning, you get a feeling about somebody and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s the tension of the different economic backgrounds, and the judgment that comes along with it.<\/p>\n<p>Artie keeps asking the deep questions, but most people deflect them. Does anybody really want to talk about free will?<\/p>\n<p>But the epigraph at the beginning of the book stunned me, it&#8217;s from Carl Jung:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.<\/p>\n<p>When I read this my eyes bugged-out like in a Looney Tunes cartoon. Most of the stuff that&#8217;s important to me people don&#8217;t want to talk about, at least in the depth I want to. Can I tell you how much time I spend each day reading ski news? Everybody says they&#8217;re into skiing, but I&#8217;m REALLY into skiing. And I&#8217;m not judging others, but if I want to talk about ramp angle in one&#8217;s boots, if I say you really should have at least three pairs of skis&#8230;they judge me for those feelings\/beliefs, even though World Cup skiers travel with a hundred pairs of skis.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, but I&#8217;m not a World Cup skier, I know&#8230; But I can feel the difference with equipment, and that&#8217;s so important to me. You don&#8217;t want an under 100mm ski in deep powder and you certainly don&#8217;t want a 120, even a 110 on hard pack.<\/p>\n<p>And now your eyes are rolling into the back of your head.<\/p>\n<p>Or Tucker Carlson&#8230; I listened to his interview with the &#8220;New York Times&#8221; and you should see my inbox&#8230; People have gone wild on me, they&#8217;re still going wild on me, you&#8217;d think I was endorsing Tucker and his positions. But no, I listened to what he said and was analyzing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s just like in the music business, when I want to split hairs and the response is always the same&#8230;it sold out, there&#8217;s nothing to say! Or it was stiff or&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>So I shut up.<\/p>\n<p>And then there&#8217;s the issue of secrets being held from you.<\/p>\n<p>And like in that Paul Simon song, &#8220;Something So Right&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When something goes wrong<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m the first to admit it<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m the first to admit it<\/p>\n<p>But the last one to know&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been doing this so long that I know the most off the wall responses come first. Hell, there was this guy telling me about Blue Dot Fever, about how Chris Stapleton had so many unsold seats for his stadium show in Nashville.<\/p>\n<p>My first reaction was&#8230; Well, Chris has been on the road for a while, maybe he&#8217;s burned out the fans. But I go on Ticketmaster and every seat for sale was a RESALE seat, there were no primary tickets available, they&#8217;d all sold out. But this guy, he was convinced.<\/p>\n<p>I never should have doubted myself.<\/p>\n<p>I live my life on the surface, as in I&#8217;m not devious, and therefore I don&#8217;t expect it in return. I come from a family of outbursts and arguments, there were no Machiavellian plays made. But I&#8217;ve been the butt of covert plans throughout my life. And the weird thing is to a degree that&#8217;s how you get ahead. By having plans and doing what&#8217;s expedient to get to the destination. And it&#8217;s why so many truly successful people have no real friends. They know a lot of people, but someone who&#8217;ll come over in the middle of the night, take them to the ER or just listen to their tale of woe&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been victimized by secrets, by omissions of facts. It&#8217;s hard to trust people after that. I&#8217;ve gotten over the hump, but this book brings it back. You&#8217;ve got your life ordered in one way, and then the apple cart is upset and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>If you grew up in the northeast, there are all the tropes that will make you swoon, the changing of seasons, the color of the leaves, the brisk winter air that requires a heavy coat, the water, but one I&#8217;d completely forgotten about was the wrapping of the bushes. Oh, it&#8217;s such an effort to live there, unlike Southern California. It builds character, and its residents will tell you so, in many cases they feel superior.<\/p>\n<p>So friendship and relationship arcs&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I had this good friend in college, and he drifted away. I said something to him, that was a mistake. It wasn&#8217;t a confrontation, it wasn&#8217;t ugly, it&#8217;s just that it became clear he&#8217;d moved on, it was uncomfortable.<\/p>\n<p>Happened with a good friend just recently. Suddenly the texts and e-mails dropped dramatically. This time I knew not to say anything. We&#8217;re still friends, but it&#8217;s not the same.<\/p>\n<p>I thought it was just me, but those experiences are right in this book.<\/p>\n<p>Or really connecting with someone and finding out years later that the friendship no longer serves you, that you no longer want to reveal as much to them, be as close.<\/p>\n<p>And Artie&#8217;s got feelings that he doesn&#8217;t share, but even worse is Evie is oftentimes oblivious, wrapped up in her own world. He wants her to see him, but is she incapable or is she working through her own problems or&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And the weak. Artie stands up for the derided. In truth, very few people do that. You know, the person people make fun of in class. And then there&#8217;s those who are troubled, what is really happening in their lives?<\/p>\n<p>I started this book last night and just couldn&#8217;t put it down. I was drawn to these people and their lives.<\/p>\n<p>Can you call someone an a**hole even after they&#8217;re dead?<\/p>\n<p>What does it take to find a couple you can hang with, the four of you, and be happy.<\/p>\n<p>What are your hopes and desires, can they come true? Will anybody support your vision if you verbalize it, will they not make fun of your dreams?<\/p>\n<p>This is an astounding book. That is totally current. Were you anxious about the 2024 election, were you shocked by Musk and his actions with DOGE? Who are these people, where do they come from? Do we have to be wary of what we say&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And then there are those who just can&#8217;t take it anymore and take action&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>This is America. &#8220;The Things We Never Say&#8221; has no answers, but the issues are there, they&#8217;re clear. We&#8217;re all wandering around, looking for connection, to be known. And we want to be left at peace, free from outside interference.<\/p>\n<p>I mean we&#8217;re just living our lives&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What kind of crazy, f*cked up world do we live in where we get a better description of, understanding of, delineation of, modern society, from Covid to Trump, in a book as opposed to any other entertainment medium, even the news! Now at this point Elizabeth Strout is mostly known for &#8220;Olive Kitteridge,&#8221; an award-winning [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-63k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23270"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23272,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23270\/revisions\/23272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}