To say that I am a faithful admirer of Elizabeth Strout’s novels is an understatement. There is something about the way she tells her stories that has appealed to me from her very first novel. With her direct prose and her subtle piecing together the broken pieces of lives of her characters, I think about them long after I’ve read them or as the case may be, reread them.
Along with her many other awards, including a Pulitzer, this book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It’s not so much that I want to review this book but want to talk about it for the way it calls out a subject that we are superficially obsessed with— in the press, social media, in the ether. Loneliness. The new epidemic social condition.
The advice: reach out, find a community, adopt new hobbies, join a book club, volunteer.
But Strout shines a light on an insidious aspect of loneliness that can never be ameliorated by such suggestions. And that is what’s sinking our protagonist, Artie Dam. A man who seemingly has it all and for all intents and purposes has a full life. A long marriage, a son, a career, his own boat, friends. And yet he feels an acute dissociation from everyone.
The book’s epigraph introduces us to the journey we will be will be taking.
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.
Carl Jung
Although I have carried Olive and Lucy and the Burgess brothers and Amy and Isabelle long after reading Strout’s books, I think the new protagonist she created is someone I would have loved to have in my life.
In this story we leave Crosby, Maine, the setting for many of the books, for a coastal town in Massachusetts. Artie Dam, the protagonist is a well-liked, fifty something high school history teacher. He is married to Evie, a woman much like Strout’s other wife characters—self absorbed, unsympathetic, uninterested in true engagement. They have a son, Rob, whose marriage to a concert pianist who frequently travels is strained because of the travel.
It is post pandemic, beginning of the Trump era. Artie’s students are increasingly anxious and he has real concern over two—a boy and girl with different sets of issues. An old friend, Flossie, whom Artie looks forward to meeting socially has moved away. He can’t connect at social gatherings because no one is serious and will not engage with the question driving him: does free will exist? He is anxious about the politics of the country and its effect on how he does his job in this more restrictive world.
As the book opens, Artie is exhausted and has suicide ideation. I am lonely enough to die, he thinks. But being Artie, he wants to find a way die so it doesn’t appear to be purposeful. But then he has a boating accident that reminds him how much he really wants to stay alive.
There is a turn in the story that could go either way for Artie’s state of mind. He hold these secret thoughts yet there is another secret that could really upend him. This new reckoning will take him back and forth through his life revisiting the past and how it led to this future.
What is remarkable is how fluidly Strout sets Artie’s story against the larger troubles in our world. As we watch our foundations crumble, we can see how that affects our everyday lives. Even when Artie discovers a secret that shifts his understanding of his life, we understand how everything is interconnected.
Artie is a very likeable character. An everyman of sorts. He is empathetic, a devoted teacher tapped into his students’ lives. He loves his wife and son. He is grateful to live in his town and have a boat to escape to each weekend. The backstory fills in where he came from. Quite another sort of world. Thus, he felt grateful and content until the swirl of uncertainty around him blows him out of his complacency.
The characters are all well developed. Once you understand who they are there are no surprises. Ironically, wife Evie is a therapist but she will not communicate meaningfully with her husband. Rob is a son who had a ghastly trauma when in high school but has developed into a loving, intelligent, engaged son either because of or despite of a secret. Flossie, a minor character, is an anchor for Artie. A sad figure, not exactly what Artie needed, but he was drawn to her and felt her absence. A relationship develops with the man who saves Artie’s life showing us to be careful of how we judge people.
The prose seems simple and direct but there are sentences that make you reread them and stop to think. The shifting from past to present sometimes seems surprising. Why now? What for? But it slides all in place.
One of many things to think about is a line in the book: “It is a private thing, to be alive.” Do any of us believe that to be true? Something to think about..
I will read this again. There is more there that I want to think about. Although there is nothing earth shattering in the story of one man’s grappling with life as he ages, sometimes you read a book just at the right time and it sets some of your own misplaced pieces into a semblance of order.
I am including a list of Strout’s books. While some have recurring characters, there is much to be gained in reading one or all.
The list: Amy and Isabelle (1998); Abide with Me (2006); Olive Kitteredge (2008); The Burgess Boys (2013); My Name is Lucy Barton (2016); Anything is Possible (2017); Olive Again (2019); Lucy By The Sea (2022); Tell Me Everything (2024); and The Things We Never Say (2026).
