Elizabeth Strout's Booker-Longlisted 'The Things We Never Say' Gets the Audiobook Treatment
Elizabeth Strout's latest novel The Things We Never Say has been longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize — one of the most closely watched literary awards in the English-speaking world — and its audiobook edition, narrated by actor Robert Petkoff and running 6 hours 35 minutes, is drawing fresh attention as the prize season heats up. The Guardian published an audiobook review of the novel on 27 August 2026.
The story centres on Artie Dam, a history teacher from coastal Massachusetts, and his wife Evie, a therapist who comes from a wealthy family. A decade before the novel's present, the couple's son Rob survived a car accident in which his girlfriend Heather was killed. The reverberations of that event drive the narrative's emotional engine.
Strout, widely known for her Lucy Barton novels and her linked-cycle fiction set in and around Maine, has long been a fixture on prize lists and bestseller charts. Her work moves through the world of a single recurring community the way a series might on television — each book revisiting familiar characters from a new angle. The Things We Never Say extends that method. The Booker longlist — typically 13 titles, chosen by a rotating panel of judges — is the first stage of a process that narrows to a shortlist in September and a winner in November.
The audiobook arrives with some commercial wind behind it already. It was published under the Random House Audio label and included in Spotify's Best Audiobooks of the Year (so far) list, one of 20 Penguin Random House titles recognised on that list. Penguin Random House confirmed the inclusion. The novel also appeared in a Penguin Random House "read-down" of Barack Obama's book picks of the season, published 30 July 2026. Penguin Random House
For listeners, the audiobook is available for purchase on Audible and through the independent retailer Libro.fm — a platform that lets buyers direct a portion of their purchase to a local bookshop of their choice.
The narrator, Robert Petkoff, is an experienced audiobook reader with a substantial catalogue across fiction and non-fiction. His involvement places the novel in a growing tier of literary audiobooks produced with named, career performers rather than automated or celebrity-only readings — a distinction that matters to a format whose audience has expanded sharply on the back of subscription services like Spotify's and Audible's.
What makes the timing notable is the convergence: a Booker longlisting, a high-profile audiobook, a former president's recommendation and a streaming-platform nod, all landing within the same window. Each of these channels reaches a different audience — prize readers, audio subscribers, political-news followers — and together they widen the path from manuscript to shelf that any single book must travel.
The review in The Guardian is an audiobook-specific assessment, meaning it engages with the novel as a listening experience as well as a text. That is a relatively recent development in mainstream book coverage, reflecting how central audio has become to how fiction reaches its audience. Strout's publisher, Penguin Random House, maintains a dedicated page for the title.
The Booker shortlist is expected in September. Whether The Things We Never Say advances is a matter for the jury, not the marketplace — but the audiobook, the endorsements and the longlisting have already given the novel a wider platform than most titles manage in a single summer.
