Maureen Corrigan

Right now, though, it's just miles of empty sand, occupied only by the architectural firm's rough headquarters.

The self-important employees there barely acknowledge Yosoye's existence.

Her lifelong loneliness motivates Yosoye to keep the pregnancy.

Here's her thinking.

An outline.

That's what Yosoye had always felt like, a hollow outline of a person moving through space.

It explained why people looked at her and looked away.

An outline had no mass, no grounding force.

This baby was now a dark little spot inside that outline.

Yosoye felt its weight.

As it grew, she would be shaded in until she became a real person.

Through uncanny language and images, Aguda enchants her readers into an intimate connection with Yosoye.

talk about enchantment.

Every time Elizabeth Strout brings out a new novel, which is often, I think to myself, she can't pull off another great book again.

And then she does.

Strout's signature subjects of loneliness and class humiliation reappear in The Things We Never Say, although Lucy Barton, a mainstay of her recent books, is absent.

Instead, we meet someone new.

Artie Dam is a 57-year-old high school history teacher, the kind of teacher who genuinely cares about his students and changes some of their lives.

That said, Artie finds himself leading a secret life of sadness.

He even contemplates suicide.