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Young Freya spends time with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she meets 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than knowing a secret," they tell her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the days that come after, they sexually assault her, then bury her alive, a mix of unease and annoyance passing across their faces as they eventually free her from her improvised coffin.

This may have functioned as the shocking centrepiece of a novel, but it's just one of many terrible events in The Elements, which gathers four novellas – published individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront past trauma and try to achieve peace in the present moment.

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

The book's publication has been marred by the inclusion of Earth, the second novella, on the longlist for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other contenders pulled out in dissent at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been called off.

Debate of LGBTQ+ matters is missing from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of major issues. Homophobia, the effect of conventional and digital platforms, parental neglect and abuse are all investigated.

Four Accounts of Pain

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow moves to a remote Irish island after her husband is jailed for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on court case as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya manages revenge with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a dad journeys to a memorial service with his teenage son, and considers how much to reveal about his family's history.

Pain is layered with trauma as damaged survivors seem fated to encounter each other repeatedly for eternity

Related Accounts

Relationships proliferate. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's group 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 reappear in homes, taverns or judicial venues in another.

These narrative elements may sound complicated, but the author understands how to propel a narrative – his earlier acclaimed Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been translated into numerous languages. His direct prose sparkles with gripping hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to toy with fire"; "the initial action I do when I come to the island is alter my name".

Personality Development and Storytelling Power

Characters are portrayed in concise, powerful lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes resonate with melancholy power or insightful humour: a boy is hit by his father after urinating at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange insults over cups of watery tea.

The author's knack of bringing you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a real excitement, for the first few times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times almost comic: suffering is layered with suffering, accident on coincidence in a dark farce in which wounded survivors seem destined to encounter each other continuously for forever.

Conceptual Depth and Final Evaluation

If this sounds not exactly life and resembling limbo, that is part of the author's thesis. These damaged people are oppressed by the crimes they have suffered, stuck in routines of thought and behavior that churn and plunge and may in turn harm others. The author has discussed about the effect of his own experiences of harm and he depicts with understanding the way his cast traverse this dangerous landscape, extending for solutions – solitude, icy sea dips, reconciliation or refreshing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "elemental" concept isn't particularly educational, while the rapid pace means the discussion of gender dynamics or digital platforms is mostly superficial. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a completely engaging, victim-focused saga: a appreciated response to the common obsession on investigators and criminals. The author shows how trauma can permeate lives and generations, and how duration and care can silence its echoes.