There is a kind of book that asks you to slow down. Not because its language is dense, but because its quietness demands attention you may not have given to your own life. The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout is that kind of book. It is small in scope and enormous in feeling, gathering the daily routines of a high school history teacher in coastal Massachusetts and stretching them, slowly, until they hold the weight of an entire interior universe. Strout, whose career has been a long study of small towns and the people inside them, returns here with the same compassionate eye she brought to Olive Kitteridge and My Name Is Lucy Barton. The novel sits a little differently in her body of work, though. It is more openly preoccupied with politics, with mortality, and with a particular kind of late-in-life loneliness that resists tidy resolution. The Premise, Spoiler-Free Artie Dam is fifty-seven. Married for three decades. Beloved by his students. Kind to his neighbors. He sails on weekends, teaches the Civil …