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Young Freya is visiting her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she encounters teenage twins. "Nothing better than being aware of a secret," they advise her, "is having one of your own." In the weeks that come after, they violate her, then entomb her breathing, blend of nervousness and annoyance darting across their faces as they ultimately free her from her makeshift coffin.

This may have functioned as the shocking centrepiece of a novel, but it's merely a single of multiple horrific events in The Elements, which assembles four novelettes – issued individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate historical pain and try to discover peace in the current moment.

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

The book's publication has been overshadowed by the inclusion of Earth, the second novella, on the longlist for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other nominees pulled out in dissent at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Debate of gender identity issues is not present from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of big issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the impact of traditional and social media, parental neglect and assault are all investigated.

Multiple Accounts of Suffering

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow transfers to a isolated Irish island after her husband is jailed for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on court case as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya manages revenge with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a father journeys to a burial with his teenage son, and ponders how much to disclose about his family's past.

Suffering is accumulated upon trauma as hurt survivors seem fated to bump into each other repeatedly for all time

Interconnected Accounts

Links proliferate. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to leave the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who shows up again in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one story reappear in houses, taverns or courtrooms in another.

These plot threads may sound tangled, but the author understands how to drive a narrative – his previous popular Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been translated into many languages. His direct prose bristles with suspenseful hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to play with fire"; "the primary step I do when I reach the island is alter my name".

Character Portrayal and Storytelling Strength

Characters are sketched in brief, powerful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes resonate with sad power or perceptive humour: a boy is punched by his father after urinating at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange insults over cups of diluted tea.

The author's knack of carrying you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an prior story a real excitement, for the first few times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times practically comic: pain is piled on trauma, coincidence on accident in a dark farce in which damaged survivors seem fated to meet each other repeatedly for forever.

Thematic Complexity and Final Assessment

If this sounds different from life and closer to limbo, that is aspect of the author's point. These wounded people are burdened by the crimes they have endured, trapped in patterns of thought and behavior that stir and descend and may in turn hurt others. The author has talked about the impact of his personal experiences of mistreatment and he depicts with understanding the way his cast traverse this perilous landscape, reaching out for solutions – isolation, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or bracing honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "elemental" structure isn't terribly instructive, while the brisk pace means the discussion of sexual politics or online networks is mostly superficial. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a thoroughly accessible, victim-focused saga: a welcome rebuttal to the usual fixation on investigators and offenders. The author demonstrates how pain can permeate lives and generations, and how duration and care can soften its reverberations.