The Secret of Elizabeth Strout's Appeal

How she writes best sellers that are also critical darlings

- Adam Begley

How does she do it?

Not just the neat trick of beguiling highbrow critics while at the same time pleasing millions of readers who don't care about literary bona fides. The real feat is harpooning the reader artlessly (or so it seems), with language as plain as a Congregational church, a paucity of dramatic incident, and a cast of characters no more exotic than your neighbors. They aren't exotic, her characters, but they're quirky—some cantankerous, some bafflingly passive, all convincingly real. Thinking about them, I keep coming back to the bedrock of her work, what she has called “the singularity and mystery of each person.” She shows us how strange we are, and how similar (an insight verging on homily but thankfully sugar-free). She’s not a minimalist, but Elizabeth Strout does more with less than any writer I can think of. Her 11th novel, The Things We Never Say, is classic Strout (New England setting, unhappy marriages, family secrets, lots of what mental-health professionals call “suicidal ideation”); her legion of fans is bound to propel it to the top of the bestseller lists. And this time, there’s an urgent topical element: The story begins in the summer of 2024—not in Maine, where Strout grew up, her go-to fictional territory, but rather in an unnamed seaside town in Massachusetts—and Donald Trump (whose name is one of the things never said) is about to be elected president for the second time. Strout’s hero, Artie Dam, is a high-school history teacher, so it comes as no surprise when he eventually writes the word FASCISM on the blackboard.