Elizabeth Strout, The Things We Never Say. Penguin Viking hb, 2026, 201pp. Library copy

After my immersion in Greek and Latin classics, I read the first half dozen or so of the Collected Stories of Canadian author Mavis Gallant. They were beautifully written, but I found them too ‘literary’ – hard to explain, but sort of self-consciously ‘clever’ and oblique. Very serious, too; sombre and a bit depressing.

What a relief to turn to the latest Elizabeth Strout. Her approach is very different from Gallant’s. Her style is (deceptively) simple and lucid, smooth and accessible – and yet one feels there’s real human depth and complexity in her characters.

There’s much of the same kind of existential crisis going on as in her other fiction. Artie Dam, a 57-year-old high school teacher of history, has lost direction and grounding (if that horribly mixed metaphor makes any kind of sense). A devastating piece of news further destabilises him, and he’s forced to reassess his closest relationships.

It’s difficult to say much more without spoilers. The backdrop is the election for his second term of President T (can’t bring myself to write his name), and Artie is distraught as his country heads for disaster. He tries to reassure his teenage students that all will be well – no more civil wars or fascist regimes – provided they don’t succumb to this president’s brand of divisive populism and nationalism.

There are numerous other characters, all of whom are well rounded and convincing – unlike some of Gallant’s bloodless expats and waifs. (I know I’m very much in the minority in not raving about the brilliance of her work – opinions differ, to paraphrase a statement made by the British royal household in the recent past).

Artie’s son Rob is also traumatised by life events; like Artie there’s an anguish and loneliness about him – as in so many of Strout’s characters. They find it hard to tell each other the important things – hence the title.

At times the narrative strays into sentimentality, as in some of the classroom scenes in which Artie’s love for his students is emphasised a little too much, while the devotion and affection of his students for him is at least tempered by some of them being pretty hostile. His teaching style falls foul of the rise in ‘anti-woke’ sentiment instigated by the new political administration.

Artie’s growing obsession with ‘free will’, and flashes of ‘precognition’ also stretch credibility rather too much – gratuitous discussions of Jungian psychology and philosophy become intrusive.

As his wife says – a sign of the growing disconnect in his marriage – Artie is too ‘soft’. Another character urges him to carry on being ‘jovial’. He’s a sad mix of decency and despair. Artie is I suppose a sort of Trump-era Willie Loman, a broken victim of what’s going wrong in our world; at one point he reflects that he doesn’t want to die, but isn’t sure he wants to live.

This second-term president has a lot to answer for.