The Things We Never Say (2026)
The Things We Never Say is set in Strout’s familiar New England, but with an entirely new cast of characters. It follows Artie Dam, a high school history teacher in his late 50s, in the months leading up to the 2024 US presidential election. Artie is married to Evie, a therapist who comes from a different social background, and they have an adult son named Rob. Some time prior to the events of the book, Rob was the driver in a car accident that killed his girlfriend; although he survived, he has been withdrawn and somewhat distant ever since. Artie himself is depicted as experiencing severe internal isolation, is emotionally disconnected from Evie, and is distressed by thoughts of the potential impact of the upcoming election. The weight of all of these concerns lead him to thoughts of suicide.
Tell Me Everything (2024)
Tell Me Everything brings together characters from across Strout’s writing career. In rural Maine, Bob Burgess (from 2013’s The Burgess Boys) finds himself taking on the case of a reclusive man who is under suspicion of the murder of his mother; also living nearby is novelist Lucy Barton, living near the coast with her ex-husband William and now firm friends with Bob; and at Bob’s suggestion Lucy also begins to visit the now nonagenarian Olive Kitteridge in her nursing home, where the two share stories and ponder on life and love.
Olive Kitteridge (2008)
Olive Kitteridge is a short story cycle covering several decades in the lives of the inhabitants of a rural Maine community. One character is common throughout the collection’s stories, the indomitable Olive, a retired schoolteacher, matriarch, and pillar (of sorts) of the local community. She is central to many of the stories, an important piece of the plot in others, and entirely peripheral to a few others. It’s superficially an odd kind of assemblage, betraying in some senses its roots as a collection of short stories published by Strout over the course of the whole of the 90s and 2000s. But it does contain narrative progression, its throughline being in the development of its lead character, who in the course of the book sees her son twice married, her husband incapacitated and later passing away, and the beginnings of an unlikely later-life relationship.
My Name is Lucy Barton (2016)
My Name is Lucy Barton introduces the New York-based author of its title. We find her recovering from an infection in hospital, where she is visited by her mother. Through their awkward but often moving interactions, and Lucy’s interior reflections, we learn - slowly, through drips of information - about Lucy’s troubled upbringing in the isolated rural town of Amgash, Illinois.
Oh WIlliam! (2022)
Oh William! returns to life of author Lucy Barton, heroine of Strout’s 2016 novel. We find her a little later in life, having recently been widowed following the death of her second husband David. Much of this novel focuses on her relationship with her first husband William, who also remarried but is left alone again part-way through the book. Lucy herself is now a successful novelist, comfortable in New York and far away from her troubled childhood in Amgash, Illinois.