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The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout: audiobook vs book, which should you choose?

This short Booker-shortlisted novel stays close to one man over one American summer and autumn. The audiobook has a new narrator for Elizabeth Strout’s books.

Read vs Listen·Verdict last reviewed 23 October 2026·6 min read

Short answer: for The Things We Never Say audiobook vs book choice, we say listen on Audible (65% confidence, leaning). Robert Petkoff reads the Penguin Audio recording, which runs 6 hours 35 minutes, unabridged. The US Random House Audio edition has the same narrator and length. Print adds bracketed asides and breaks between short passages. One viewpoint and one narrator is the only confirmed factor, and nothing confirmed points to print.

Confidence 65%, which puts it in the leaning band. Bands run from close call at 50 to 64, through leaning at 65 to 79 and clear at 80 to 94, up to clear cut at 95 and above.

What this book actually is

The Things We Never Say is Elizabeth Strout's 11th novel, published by Viking on 7 May 2026 at 208 pages. It is her second Booker shortlisting. It is a standalone with a new cast, not part of the Olive Kitteridge or Lucy Barton books, though Artie remembers a book his wife loved about “a crotchety old woman from Maine”.

Artie Dam teaches history in a coastal Massachusetts town, has been married for three decades and sails at weekends. He learns a secret that threatens his world. The story runs through the summer and autumn of 2024, up to and after the US election, told in close third person in short passages. The narrator now and then steps back to tell you what will happen later, or to add context in brackets.

The case for reading it

The printed book uses a few small devices. The Booker extract shows asides in parentheses, such as “(and which Artie, with no piano lessons to his name, would sit and compose little pieces on)”. One reviewer describes passages that are “sometimes a few pages, sometimes just three or four lines”, separated by breaks, and the BookBrowse excerpt opens with a numbered section. There is also an epigraph from Carl Jung on loneliness.

Strout's narrator also makes general statements, like “All of us live with a huge blind spot before our eyes”, which some readers will want to underline. None of this is heavy, but these are the parts of the book a listener cannot see.

The case for listening to it

The structure is simple: one man, one season, one point of view. That kind of structure works well on audio, and at 6 hours 35 minutes it is short. Robert Petkoff reads it on his own, and the recording is rated 4.6 from 695 ratings on Audible UK at the time of writing.

There is nothing here to keep track of that print would help with: no second timeline, no dialect, no cast of narrators. The brackets and breaks are the only things a listener misses, and a narrator can signal some of them with tone, though how this one does is not documented.

Get the audiobook6h 35m, read by Robert Petkoff

Listen on Audible

The audiobook in detail

Penguin Audio released the unabridged recording on 7 May 2026, the same day as the hardback. It runs 6 hours 35 minutes on Audible UK (Penguin lists 396 minutes), which is about 4 hours 23 minutes at 1.5x and 3 hours 18 minutes at 2x. No bonus material is listed.

The narrator is new for Strout's novels. On Audible's author listings, Strout's novels from My Name Is Lucy Barton to Tell Me Everything are read by Kimberly Farr. This one is read by Robert Petkoff, whose other credits include Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan and Switzy by Emma Cline. He is also one of the voices on The Correspondent. Whether the recording reads the epigraph or the section numbers is not documented.

Who should ignore this verdict

If you have followed Kimberly Farr through Strout’s earlier books and want that voice, note that this is a different reader, so try a sample first.

Print suits readers who like to underline. The narrator’s asides and general statements are easier to mark in print, and the brackets, the breaks between passages and the Carl Jung epigraph are the things a listener misses.

Print also suits anyone who wants the text exactly as printed, because whether the recording reads the epigraph or the section numbers is not documented.

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