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Young Freya spends time with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she meets 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than being aware of a secret," they inform her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the time that follow, they will rape her, then inter her while living, a mix of nervousness and frustration flitting across their faces as they ultimately release her from her makeshift coffin.

This might have stood as the jarring centrepiece of a novel, but it's just one of numerous horrific events in The Elements, which assembles four novellas – issued separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate historical pain and try to find peace in the contemporary moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's issuance has been marred by the addition of Earth, the second novella, on the longlist for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other candidates dropped out in objection at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Debate of trans rights is not present from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of big issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the influence of mainstream and online outlets, parental neglect and sexual violence are all investigated.

Four Narratives of Trauma

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow moves to a secluded Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on trial as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya manages revenge with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a parent journeys to a burial with his young son, and ponders how much to divulge about his family's history.

Suffering is layered with pain as damaged survivors seem destined to meet each other again and again for forever

Related Narratives

Connections abound. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to leave the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who reappears in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one story return in homes, taverns or legal settings in another.

These plot threads 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 converted into dozens languages. His direct prose sparkles with thriller-ish hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to toy with fire"; "the primary step I do when I come to the island is modify my name".

Personality Portrayal and Narrative Strength

Characters are portrayed in succinct, effective lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes echo with melancholy power or insightful humour: a boy is punched by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade insults over cups of diluted tea.

The author's talent of bringing you fully into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a authentic frisson, for the first few times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is numbing, and at times almost comic: trauma is accumulated upon trauma, coincidence on coincidence in a bleak farce in which hurt survivors seem fated to meet each other again and again for all time.

Thematic Complexity and Final Evaluation

If this sounds less like life and more like uncertainty, that is part of the author's message. These hurt people are oppressed by the crimes they have endured, stuck in cycles of thought and behavior that agitate and spiral and may in turn harm others. The author has discussed about the influence of his individual experiences of mistreatment and he portrays with sympathy the way his ensemble negotiate this dangerous landscape, striving for treatments – isolation, cold ocean swims, resolution or refreshing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" framing isn't extremely informative, while the rapid pace means the examination of social issues or social media is primarily surface-level. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a entirely readable, victim-focused chronicle: a valued riposte to the usual fixation on investigators and perpetrators. The author shows how pain can run through lives and generations, and how time and compassion can silence its aftereffects.