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Young Freya spends time with her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she comes across 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they advise her, "is having one of your own." In the weeks that come after, they violate her, then inter her while living, a mix of nervousness and annoyance passing across their faces as they eventually free her from her improvised coffin.

This might have stood as the shocking focal point of a novel, but it's just one of multiple awful events in The Elements, which collects four novelettes – published distinctly between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront previous suffering and try to discover peace in the contemporary moment.

Disputed Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's publication has been clouded by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a prominent LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other contenders dropped out in dissent at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Discussion of LGBTQ+ matters is missing from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of big issues. Homophobia, the impact of mainstream and online outlets, parental neglect and assault are all explored.

Multiple Accounts of Pain

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow transfers to a remote Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on trial as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya juggles vengeance with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a parent travels to a memorial service with his adolescent son, and considers how much to reveal about his family's past.

Trauma is accumulated upon pain as damaged survivors seem doomed to bump into each other repeatedly for eternity

Related Narratives

Connections proliferate. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to leave the island of Water. His trial's panel contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one story return in cottages, bars or judicial venues in another.

These plot threads may sound complex, but the author knows how to drive a narrative – his previous successful Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been converted into numerous languages. His straightforward prose shines with thriller-ish hooks: "in the end, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to experiment with fire"; "the first thing I do when I come to the island is alter my name".

Personality Development and Storytelling Strength

Characters are portrayed in brief, effective lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes echo with melancholy power or observational humour: a boy is hit by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap barbs over cups of weak tea.

The author's talent of bringing you completely into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an previous story a authentic thrill, for the initial several times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times almost comic: suffering is accumulated upon trauma, accident on coincidence in a dark farce in which wounded survivors seem destined to encounter each other repeatedly for all time.

Conceptual Complexity and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds different from life and more like uncertainty, that is aspect of the author's point. These wounded people are weighed down 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 spoken about the impact of his personal experiences of harm and he depicts with compassion the way his cast traverse this dangerous landscape, extending for solutions – isolation, icy sea dips, reconciliation or bracing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "fundamental" structure isn't extremely educational, while the brisk pace means the exploration of social issues or online networks is primarily surface-level. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a completely engaging, victim-focused chronicle: a appreciated riposte to the usual preoccupation on investigators and perpetrators. The author illustrates how trauma can affect lives and generations, and how years and tenderness can soften its reverberations.