Elizabeth Strout releases 11th novel
- Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, The Things We Never Say, arrives May 5, with Time profiling its lonely protagonist, Massachusetts teacher Artie Dam, on April 28. - The 224-page book is Strout’s 11th novel and first new standalone after 2024’s Tell Me Everything, shifting her fiction from Maine to coastal Massachusetts. - Strout won the 2009 Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge and remains one of literary fiction’s biggest names. (time.com)
Elizabeth Strout’s next novel, The Things We Never Say, is due May 5, and it centers on a Massachusetts teacher named Artie Dam. (time.com) (penguinrandomhouse.com) Time reported on April 28 that Artie is a 57-year-old high school history teacher and coach who seems cheerful in public but is privately consumed by loneliness. (time.com) Penguin Random House says the hardcover runs 224 pages and lists a May 5, 2026 publication date with a $29 price. The publisher describes the book as a story about isolation, friendship, parenthood, and a secret that upends Artie’s life. (penguinrandomhouse.com) The book marks a geographic break for Strout. After years of building what Time called a Maine-centered fictional universe, she moves this story down the coast to a Massachusetts town near the water. (time.com) (kirkusreviews.com) Kirkus reported when the book was announced in October 2025 that it was Strout’s 11th novel. It follows 2024’s Tell Me Everything, which Strout’s website identifies as her most recent release before this one. (kirkusreviews.com) (elizabethstrout.com) Strout told Time that the character began with an old obituary photo a friend had sent her. She said she saw “the most pleasant, ordinary face” and started imagining who that man had been. (time.com) She then placed Artie in 2016, a year she told Time mattered because public life in the United States was beginning to fracture in new ways. The magazine said the novel treats secrecy as both a burden and a form of release. (time.com) Strout’s standing gives the release extra attention. Penguin Random House and her website both bill her as a Pulitzer Prize-winning, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author, with Olive Kitteridge winning the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. (penguinrandomhouse.com) (elizabethstrout.com) Her site also lists a North American launch event in Huntington, New York, on May 4, one day before publication. The novel arrives as Strout trades familiar Maine characters for a new man trying to explain his own solitude. (elizabethstrout.com) (time.com)
