Elizabeth Strout's latest novel probes loneliness and a fractured America

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Book ReviewThe Things We Never Say: A Novel By Elizabeth Stout Random House: 224 pages, $29If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.As a high school history teacher and a friend, Artie Dam is beloved.His principal hobby, sailing the waters of coastal Massachusetts, brings him bliss.

But his wife seems cool and his son distant, and 57-year-old Artie is plagued by an indissoluble loneliness that tempts him to end his life.In “The Things We Never Say,” Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, reprises her familiar themes: the mysteries of human personality, the perils of solitude, the occasional possibility of grace.All this she expresses in deceptively simple, occasionally mannered prose that draws readers in and immerses them in her fictional worlds.Strout has meticulously constructed these worlds in linked short stories and novels, set in imaginary small towns such as Crosby, Maine, and Amgash, Ill.

With Artie Dam, she has chosen a new protagonist and setting.The time is the post-pandemic present, on both sides of an election destined to further divide an already polarized populace.

When a conspicuously unnamed figure recaptures the presidency, half the country is left “stunned, the other half jubilant.”In this context, even friendships become fraught.Artie worries that a new confidant, who literally saved his life, may have voted the wrong way.

Avoiding politics, as he avoids so much else, seems the most practical course.Books From romance and memoirs to mystery and fantasy, here are the 101 best book club picks, according to a survey of more than 200 authors, publishers, journalists and book club fans.A man of good will wrestling with middle-aged angst, Artie is “in many ways, the embodiment of the American dream,” Strout tell...