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Twelve-year-old Freya is visiting her distracted mother in Cornwall when she encounters teenage twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they tell her, "is having one of your own." In the days that follow, they sexually assault her, then bury her alive, a mix of unease and frustration passing across their faces as they ultimately free her from her temporary coffin.

This might have stood as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's just one of multiple awful events in The Elements, which collects four novelettes – published separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate previous suffering and try to achieve peace in the current moment.

Disputed Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's issuance has been clouded by the addition of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other contenders withdrew in protest at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Conversation of LGBTQ+ matters is absent from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of major issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the impact of traditional and social media, parental neglect and abuse are all examined.

Four Stories of Suffering

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow moves to a secluded Irish island after her husband is jailed for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on trial as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya manages revenge with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a dad travels to a memorial service with his young son, and ponders how much to reveal about his family's past.

Suffering is piled on suffering as damaged survivors seem doomed to meet each other again and again for eternity

Linked Narratives

Connections abound. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's panel contains the Freya who reappears in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, collaborates with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one story resurface in cottages, pubs or judicial venues in another.

These narrative elements may sound complicated, but the author is skilled at how to drive a narrative – his previous popular Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been translated into numerous languages. His businesslike prose shines with suspenseful hooks: "in the end, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to toy with fire"; "the first thing I do when I arrive on the island is alter my name".

Personality Development and Narrative Power

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

The author's knack of bringing you completely into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an previous story a real thrill, for the initial several times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times practically comic: trauma is layered with pain, chance on chance in a grim farce in which hurt survivors seem doomed to bump into each other again and again for forever.

Thematic Depth and Final Assessment

If this sounds less like life and closer to limbo, that is part of the author's thesis. These hurt people are weighed down 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 talked about the impact of his individual experiences of mistreatment and he describes with understanding the way his characters traverse this dangerous landscape, extending for solutions – seclusion, frigid water immersion, reconciliation or refreshing honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "basic" concept isn't particularly educational, while the rapid pace means the exploration of sexual politics or social media is primarily shallow. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a entirely accessible, trauma-oriented epic: a welcome response to the typical preoccupation on detectives and criminals. The author shows how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how time and tenderness can soften its reverberations.