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Artie Dam is a much-loved history teacher from coastal Massachusetts famed for his white socks and old sneakers and who sees a growing hopelessness in his young students. Not only are they dispirited by the state of the world, but they also believe they won’t be able to achieve their professional dreams. Their feelings of dread and ennui are shared by Artie who is aghast at the imminent re-election of a cruel and divisive leader (who remains nameless).

Artie is also lonely in the company of his wife, Evie, a therapist who comes from a wealthy family and is dismissive of her “soft” spouse. Artie realises he doesn’t truly know Evie, and she doesn’t care to know him. He traces their loss of connection to their son Rob’s car accident a decade ago in which Rob survived but his girlfriend Heather was killed. Such is Artie’s desolation that he contemplates suicide, if only he can find a way of doing it discreetly. But something happens while he is sailing in his boat that changes his mind. Later, a revelation from his son further shifts his perspective on his relationships.

The Things We Never Say is the latest book from Elizabeth Strout which has been longlisted for this year’s Booker prize and which subtly binds together political events and private anxiety to portray a decent man in existential crisis. The reader is the actor Robert Petkoff who conveys Artie’s innate kindness and quiet despair. With that despair comes a realisation that “every single person [holds] within themselves a vast, unknowable universe”.

• Available via Penguin Audio, 6hr 35min

Further listening

Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush
Colm Tóibín, Picador, 3hr 3min
Derbhle Crotty reads the Brooklyn author’s 2003 essay on Augusta Gregory, the Irish playwright and folk historian who famously observed how ownership of a toothbrush separated the gentry from the peasant classes.

Biological War: A Scenario
Annie Jacobsen, Transworld Digital, 11hr 13min
An explosion in a laboratory in Siberia has terrible consequences as a deadly pathogen is released into the atmosphere. Jacobsen narrates her thriller about a biological event based on real-life interviews with senior figures in the military, the CIA and Nato.