{"id":429924,"date":"2026-05-03T08:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T08:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/429924\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T08:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T08:39:08","slug":"its-a-deeply-sad-time-in-the-us-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/429924\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s a deeply sad time in the US\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A teacher lets a student know that he also wants to say \u201cf**k you\u201d to the world. A store owner shows great kindness to a customer. A son shares a secret with his father. Elizabeth Strout<\/a> has always included what she describes as \u201cmoments of grace\u201d in her novels, but in The Things We Never Say, set in a coastal town in Massachusetts before and after the re-election of Donald Trump<\/a>, these moments of connection and empathy appear in even sharper relief.<\/p>\n

I ask Strout, speaking from her home in Brunswick, Maine, if she thinks this new novel will spark conversation in the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. I suspect it will. I really don\u2019t know how this book will be received over here. I have some trepidation, but there it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

For long-time fans of the American writer, there is much to love about her new central protagonist: Artie Dam is a 57-year-old high school history teacher who, when we first meet him, is enduring acute feelings of isolation and suicidal ideation.<\/p>\n

His wife Evie has become \u201cfar more officious\u201d since a tragic accident; his son Rob has \u201cturned quiet\u201d and distant. His students seem more subdued and fearful than ever; at parties, people \u201cnever say anything real\u201d. Events, both in his own life and the political life of the country, threaten to hinder or colour his friendships.<\/p>\n

The Things We Never Say is not located within the same Maine-centred universe to which recurring Strout characters such as Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess belong, but the precise sadness of those novels is here in spades.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never want to leave somebody in despair at the end of a book. I just hope that there are enough moments of grace in it that people will feel a sense of comfort, and some sense of life-affirmation going on in the middle of Artie\u2019s despair,\u201d Strout says.<\/p>\n

The book opens with a quote from Carl Jung that proves an efficient pointer to what is happening to Artie and those around him: \u201cLoneliness 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Strout came across it when she was first starting to write about Artie. \u201cI thought, \u2018Oh, I think that\u2019s exactly what I\u2019m trying to say in this book.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t usually plan her novels. \u201cI never know where it\u2019s going. But with this book I realised I had to put down breadcrumbs, or little clues, along the way,\u201d she says. She was writing chronologically, rather than her usual method of writing scenes out of order, then shuffling them around, and she knew she wanted to open the book with Flossie, Artie\u2019s widowed friend, cajoling him to remain his \u201cold jovial self\u201d after she leaves town.<\/p>\n

\"ElizabethElizabeth Strout will attend the Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas in Co Carlow this summer <\/p>\n

\u201cArtie has spent his life being thought of as jovial. He thinks of himself as jovial. He\u2019s gotten through the world by being jovial. And then we\u2019re going to find out that he\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoover Lakeland, the principal of Artie\u2019s school, anticipates that \u201che\u201d \u2013 Trump is unnamed throughout \u2013 will win the election because voters \u201ccrave authority\u201d. Another craving is repeatedly mentioned. Artie is struck by the memory of his late sister guiltily consuming confectionery sugar. In a volatile household, she was \u201cjust looking for something sweet\u201d. Did Strout intend this as a metaphor for polling-station logic?<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think about what I\u2019m doing when I\u2019m doing it. I\u2019m actually just concentrating so hard on being inside the character\u2019s head and writing his story, finding his story, and then when I find it, I realise, \u2018Oh, that is actually a metaphor for such and such.\u2019 But I don\u2019t mean it when I\u2019m writing it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time she has woven politics into her work. The Burgess Boys, her fourth novel, was \u201cpretty overtly political\u201d in how it dealt with racial tensions and hate crime in the \u201cvery white state of Maine\u201d. She has also written in close step with current events before, with 2022\u2019s Lucy by the Sea set against the fraught backdrop of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

This time there was simply no avoiding the fallout of Trump 2.0 in the lives of ordinary people. \u201cI didn\u2019t set out to write a political book. I realised, okay, I need to record this through Artie\u2019s point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Elizabeth Strout: \u2018I don\u2019t know many people who didn\u2019t have something disturbing happen in their childhood\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Strout finished The Things We Never Say more than a year ago, but in an epilogue that moves from mid-2025 into the near future she refers to \u201cthose protests in which people were killed in the streets\u201d. This was fiction, until it wasn\u2019t. Between its writing and the book\u2019s publication, it came true.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know what state the world is in when we leave Artie, but we know that another character who feels obliged to leave the US is still living abroad and can envisage a time \u201cwhen due process just no longer exists\u201d for anyone.<\/p>\n

The election result itself is starkly recorded at the midpoint of the novel, in two short sentences that sit on a mostly blank page. \u201cIt just came to me, and I thought we\u2019re going to give this one page \u2013 a whole page with these two lines on it \u2013 because that\u2019s when this rupture in Artie\u2019s life really starts.\u201d<\/p>\n

She chose to set the novel in Massachusetts because she was \u201cjust sort of tired of Maine\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean I was just sort of done writing about Maine for the moment. I thought, you know, enough, enough, enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state has a similar coastline to Maine, but \u201cthere\u2019s more money, more people\u201d. She and her husband \u2013 James Tierney, a former Democrat attorney general of Maine \u2013 took a two- or three-day drive down its coast in search of the visuals she needs to start a book, and found a house that could be Artie\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Massachusetts is a Democratic stronghold, with Kamala Harris winning the state by 25 points in 2024, but this result masks an eight-point swing to the Republicans compared to the 2020 election. The trend makes it a fitting place for a man like Artie to be surprised by the leanings of those around him and, in one case, resolve not to spoil a friendship by talking about politics.<\/p>\n

\"ElizabethElizabeth Strout is a Pulitzer Prize winner and was shortlisted for a Booker Prize for Oh William! Photograph: Erik Tanner\/The New York Times <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not in my family, but I certainly know many families where this has split the family, divided the family,\u201d says Strout.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a very, very old friend who was a supporter of Trump\u2019s, but no longer is since he posted the Christ picture<\/a> \u2013 that was too much for my friend. But he and I have never spoken about it. Well, he did about the picture. But we just tacitly agreed [before] to never speak about it. We\u2019ve known each other forever, and we love each other, so we just never said anything about it, and that\u2019s how you deal with it. But it\u2019s odd, it\u2019s very odd.\u201d<\/p>\n

This coping tactic is necessary to preserve some friendships, but it also \u2013 as that Jung quotation suggests \u2013 foments loneliness, she thinks. And yet something else, which she interprets as a compensatory behaviour, is happening at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have noticed, and I\u2019ve asked other people and they have noticed this too, that if you go to the store, for example, and the person is checking you out, we will have a little bit of conversation and be very nice to each other in a way that I don\u2019t think we used to be. We were a little more indifferent with these meetings of strangers,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a need, I think, in this country for people to be kind to each other, to feel the kindness, to receive it and to give it, in whatever small way we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

That speaks to how shocked people are feeling?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, it\u2019s a very … it\u2019s a deeply sad time.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Artie\u2019s regrets is that he didn\u2019t properly get to know his late father \u2013 a common realisation not specific to his generation or men, Strout says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m 70, and I was just saying to somebody else that I think about my [late] parents briefly every day and they become more and more mysterious to me. My father\u2019s been dead for years, and yet every so often I think, \u2018Wait a minute … why? What was that conversation really about?\u2019 So I think that at a certain point, we do begin to realise we did not know our parents. Or, at least, I didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Things We Never Say was announced as a standalone book, but that doesn\u2019t mean this is the last we will see of its characters. \u201cI\u2019ve thought about Rob\u2019s wife, Francesca. She\u2019s a little bit intriguing to me, and I\u2019ve fooled around with a few little scenes, but to write about a concert pianist would be a huge task. I\u2019m not saying I\u2019m not up for it, but we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Strout has learned to never say never, especially when it comes to the question of whether she will return to her Maine-linked characters, who crossed paths in 2024\u2019s Tell Me Everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019m not [going back to them], but I\u2019ve said that every time. Every time I\u2019ve finished a book I\u2019ve said, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m done with that,\u2019 and I\u2019ve believed it. So now, even though I feel that way, I\u2019m not going to say it, because I don\u2019t trust myself. I just don\u2019t know what will come next.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for what comes next for The Things We Never Say, Strout is poised to return to New York, where she also has a home, and she will promote the book in the US before travelling to Europe for stops that include the Hay Festival in Wales and the sold-out Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas in Co Carlow. Later in the summer, she will travel to Denmark and Norway.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Elizabeth Strout: \u2018You will continue to get better if you keep writing. That\u2019s what I did\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It has been a feature of Strout\u2019s past signings and festival appearances that women confide in her about struggling with the same jealousy and resentment that Olive Kitteridge feels towards her daughter-in-law.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019ve had this thought, then probably somebody else has. We all think other people haven\u2019t had the thoughts we have had,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In the same vein, the way in which Artie \u2013 a good man who already feels disconnected from those around him \u2013 is both quietly worn down and directly affected by Trumpism is likely to be devastatingly relatable to many.<\/p>\n

The Things We Never Say is published on May 7th by Viking<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A teacher lets a student know that he also wants to say \u201cf**k you\u201d to the world. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[969,121458,93,61,60,115,90],"class_list":["post-429924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-donald-trump","tag-elizabeth-strout","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-united-states","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}