Terrible big secrets and terrible wee secrets as well that they feel they can't share.

Yeah, exactly.

And also for the first time in a real way, Artie has been understanding the class difference between his wife and himself.

You know, he came from a very working class family and he fell in love with her and he married her, you know, as a young person and he sort of didn't know what that meant but he's in his adolescence so to speak throughout the book he's beginning to think how did that happen and what does that actually mean for who i am and he starts to think a great deal about his parents and i do think that that does happen as we get older we start to think wait a minute who were you you know you think you know them Growing up, you think, oh, that's my mother, that's my father.

But then you realise at a certain point, wait a minute, who were you? I don't really think I know you.

So that's part of his story in the book as well.

Are you saying something about that whole profession?

Teachers are enormously important, especially when they're good.

were both a piano player and a cocktail waitress?

Yeah.

Where was that? In Lewiston, Maine.

Played four nights a week.

And then cocktail waitress in a different place.

Wow.

And I do remember thinking to myself, if I'm 58 years old and I'm still a cocktail waitress, that will be a pathetic life.

Tell me about deciding

waitress? Yeah.

Where was that? In Lewiston, Maine.

Played four nights a week and then cocktail waitress in a different place.

Wow.

And I do remember thinking to myself, if I'm 58 years old and I'm still a cocktail waitress, that will be a pathetic life.

And now I don't actually think that anymore.

I think that would have been just as honest life as any other life.

Tell me about deciding

Like, were you kinda, like, hungry for understanding-

I was desperate for people.

First of all, 'cause I didn't see enough people, and I just thought, I've always been interested in people.

And I can remember wanting to follow people home just to see what the inside of their doorways looked like.

Like, how many boots would be there? You know, was it messy? What did their kitchens look like? And on my honeymoon with my first husband, and he jokes about this now, we went to some ruins in Mexico.

I don't know.

We took some trip.

Um, did church interest you as a kid?

Anywhere

... which is so helpful.

Yeah.

I can write on the subway.

I can write absolutely anywhere, which is really, really helpful.

And I, um, I actually- Well, I do have a studio in Maine, but I haven't been there for a while.

I mean, people I know in New York have their... what they call their offices, and it makes me so nervous, you know? Because it's like, oh, wow, you have to sit there and be a writer at this desk, and you've got these flowers on the desk.

If you hadn't become a hugely successful author, is there another job that you think you would have liked doing?

This is Arty Damm in the classroom setting the writing exercise that he gives to his students at the start of every school year.

He was fifty-seven years old, and he did still love his students, but the pandemic had been hard on them.

He had noticed this in the more than three years since.

The students had changed.

They were anxious and not argumentative with him or one another as he had known them to be in the past when there had been lively discussions.

It was often difficult now to even get them to talk.

On the first day of every school year, Artie would hand out sheets of white lined paper saying to his students, "Write anything you want, but I need at least two pages.

First, Artie's wife, Evie, and, and then his son, Rob.

Well, will you introduce the novel and, and perhaps talk about the genifi- genesis of The Things We Never Say?

Yeah.

Um, the novel is, is essentially about a 57-year-old history teacher, who's a wonderful teacher as far as I'm concerned, and yet, and he's known as being jovial and, you know, he's just a nice guy.

But he goes through, you know, he starts off the book distressed, and then he [laughs] ends off the book, I think, even more distressed.

But in the middle, there's, there's a relationship with his son that really blossoms and, you know, there are, there are happy things in there.

Um, and the book came to me from two different sources.

One was a friend of mine in upstate New York, this was in, a, a few years ago, had sent me some obituaries of, um, just some people he'd see.

[laughs]

... an explorer for their child.

It's just something, you know, that I have observed over the years, not even in my own personal situ- although it has to be true.

But I've just observed that, um, certain patterns follow through generations and, you know, if somebody does take a sidestep or something, that will affect the next few generations, which will affect the next... [laughs] You know? I mean, it's just, it was just an instinct I had that this- This is what we might not understand as parents, that we are, to our children, we are, no matter how old they are, we are, often anyway, not always, but we are their guide.

Even if they are still an- even if they're angry at us or whatever [laughs], you know, but we are fundamentally, in a way, their guide.

But when you, when you s- start out telling this story, Elizabeth, how much do you know what you're going to write, and how much is a process of discovery as you go along?

Right.

It's all a process of discovery.

I know almost nothing when I start out, and that's wh-...

How do you develop empathy and understanding in your writing having come from that background?

I think because I did come from that background.

I think that, um, and I, and I'm not, I'm not putting my parents down for this at all, but there was a lot of judgment.

When you are that Puritanical you do, without even s- you don't even have to say it, but w- you know, I picked up that they were very judgmental about this, that, and the other thing.

And I think, this is an interesting question because I've, I've never tried to describe this before, but I think there was something about living under that, you know, umbrella of judgment that made me not want to be judgmental.

And it's not that I'm not judgmental in my own life.

You know, I am.

... discover you have a different political point of view.

He's, he's called into the head teacher's office.

Right.

So he's been teaching the Civil War for many years, and he teaches it to these Massachusetts students.

He assigns them each a soldier or a nurse from Massachusetts who were in-- who, you know, somebody in the Civil War, and they look at their letters, and they take on the identity and all that stuff.

And he's been doing that for years, and he's called into the principal's office, and the principal says the school board is starting to ask why you don't do Confederate soldiers.

And that, for anybody who wants to know or is aware, and even if they're not, they'll find out, that's the beginning of a change in the outer world that will affect Artie's inner world.

Yeah.

Okay.

Artie's anxiety, isn't it?

Exactly.

Precisely.

Precisely.

And as we know, he teaches the Civil War every year, and he teaches it by assigning every student a Massachusetts soldier or a nurse.

And then when the principal calls him in and says, "The school board wants you to use Confederate soldiers," that's the first ping that things are gonna change.

And, and that's actually true.

Mm

What, but, but what is his loneliness?

Well, you know, when he first, when the book first starts and he's feeling quite desolate, as I was writing that, I thought, "What am I gonna do with this? How am I gonna get myself out of this?" [laughs] And, and then all of a sudden, well, not all of a sudden, but very slowly, actually, I began to understand, oh, I actually knew what I was doing unconsciously.

I was setting it up for him to feel lonely because his wife has, um, withdrawn from him intermittently during that time period, and his son has withdrawn from him quite a bit during that time period, and then I realized why.

And I thought, "Oh, this is why Arty is feeling sad, and this is what he's going to find out."

So tell me about her father.

She, my mother's father, he died when she was young, when I was young, and he was, um, he came from a very harsh background.

And I remember her telling me that he was the eldest of a number of children, and his father would beat the kids, and that he would, um, step in and take the beatings for the younger kids.

So he, and he never spoke.

... can you share like a little elevator pitch for The Things We Never Say?

Well, it's basically about Artie Dann, who is a high school history teacher, and by all accounts, his life seems to be perfectly pleasant.

But under the surface, there are things going on.

And at the beginning of the book, he's feeling especially lonely, and then we hopefully find out it's because his wife has sort of temporarily stepped away in little ways, and his son has increasingly distanced himself, and then we find out why, et cetera, et cetera.

And then he goes forward from there, fully back into life, but it's a bit of a different life.

And as he proceeds, it's only really about six months the time, the, or three months that the book takes place in.

Although, it skips ahead a few years-

... which is such a weird thing to think about

And when did he first visit you? Because I know the characters' voices visit you, so when did he first speak to you?

Well, this, this is interesting about Artie Damn.

I mean, interesting for me [laughs] and hope for, for listeners, but Artie Damn showed up on the outer edge of my mind a few years ago.

I have a friend in upstate New York who just sends me different things, whatever.

Anyway, one day he sent me obituaries from the '60s and '70s, a page of them, and I was just looking through them, and there was a man with the last name Damm, only that was spelled D-A-M-M, and he had these big wire-framed glasses, and he was so ordinary-looking and so pleasant-looking.

And I can still remember his face, and I don't know, I can't remember what the obituary said he did or anything like that, but his face was so pleasant and ordinary, unbelievably plain and ordinary, and he stayed with me, had a smile, and he stayed with me, and then I thought, "Artie Damn, D-A-M." And then once I got his name, which is always helpful, I realized, "Oh, Artie, let's go.

Let's see what you're gonna tell me."

And what did he tell you? What were the first directions that The Things We Never Say pushed you in?

Why, why was free will on your mind when writing this book?

I don't know, but that's one of the things that came up about Artie.

Like, he's at the party, and he's asking Hoover Likeland, you know, "Do you think there's a..." And I, and I thought, "Oh, how intriguing." And I think it's just because he is beginning to have inner, interior changes.

You know, instead of just being jovial Artie going through his life, he's, he's beginning to question things and think about things in a whole new way, and it seemed to me, you know, he studied history, and yet he's actually wondering, "Huh, I wonder if we have free will." You know, it's not like he's the smartest man in the world, but he's perfectly intelligent, but he's not super brainy like his son is.

But you know, I just thought it was interesting to, to see him wonder about that and then follow through with it.

Uh, what, what's the relevance of this place to the story?

Well, you know, I, I mean, I know Massach- I mean, I used to live in Boston many years ago, and, and so Massachusetts is not that far from me, but culturally it's very different.

And my husband and I drove down there f- we took a two or three-day drive along the coast of Massachusetts, because I always need visuals.