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Young Freya stays with her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she comes across 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they tell her, "is having one of your own." In the weeks that ensue, they violate her, then inter her while living, blend of nervousness and irritation darting across their faces as they ultimately free her from her temporary coffin.

This may have functioned as the jarring focal point of a novel, but it's only one of multiple terrible events in The Elements, which gathers four novelettes – released individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate historical pain and try to discover peace in the contemporary moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's publication has been clouded by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the longlist for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other nominees pulled out in dissent at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Debate of trans rights is missing from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the influence of conventional and digital platforms, caregiver abandonment and assault are all investigated.

Four Accounts of Pain

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow transfers to a isolated Irish island after her husband is jailed for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on legal proceedings as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya manages vengeance with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a father flies to a burial with his young son, and considers how much to reveal about his family's past.

Trauma is accumulated upon suffering as hurt survivors seem destined to meet each other again and again for forever

Interconnected Narratives

Connections multiply. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Supporting characters from one story resurface in homes, taverns or judicial venues in another.

These storylines may sound complex, but the author knows how to power a narrative – his earlier popular Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been rendered into many languages. His businesslike prose sparkles with gripping hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to play with fire"; "the initial action I do when I arrive on the island is alter my name".

Personality Portrayal and Storytelling Strength

Characters are sketched in brief, effective lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes resonate with melancholy power or observational humour: a boy is punched by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange barbs over cups of watery tea.

The author's talent of carrying you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an prior story a genuine frisson, for the first few times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is numbing, and at times practically comic: suffering is piled on trauma, chance on chance in a dark farce in which wounded survivors seem fated to encounter each other again and again for forever.

Conceptual Complexity and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds less like life and closer to uncertainty, that is part of the author's thesis. These hurt people are weighed down by the crimes they have experienced, trapped in routines of thought and behavior that churn and spiral and may in turn harm others. The author has talked about the influence of his individual experiences of harm and he portrays with understanding the way his cast traverse this dangerous landscape, reaching out for treatments – seclusion, cold ocean swims, reconciliation or invigorating honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "basic" framing isn't extremely instructive, while the quick pace means the discussion of social issues or digital platforms is mainly superficial. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a completely readable, trauma-oriented epic: a valued rebuttal to the typical preoccupation on investigators and perpetrators. The author shows how trauma can permeate lives and generations, and how duration and care can soften its echoes.