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Twelve-year-old Freya is visiting her distracted mother in Cornwall when she comes across 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they inform her, "is having one of your own." In the time that follow, they sexually assault her, then entomb her breathing, combination of unease and irritation flitting across their faces as they ultimately free her from her temporary coffin.

This could have served as the disturbing main event of a novel, but it's merely a single of numerous horrific events in The Elements, which gathers four novelettes – published individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate historical pain and try to achieve peace in the present moment.

Disputed Context and Subject Exploration

The book's issuance has been overshadowed by the presence of Earth, the second novella, on the preliminary list for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other contenders pulled out in protest at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Discussion of gender identity issues is missing from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of significant issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the influence of traditional and social media, caregiver abandonment and sexual violence are all explored.

Multiple Narratives of Trauma

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow relocates to a remote Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on trial as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya juggles retaliation with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a dad flies to a funeral with his teenage son, and wonders how much to divulge about his family's history.

Suffering is accumulated upon trauma as damaged survivors seem doomed to bump into each other again and again for all time

Related Accounts

Links proliferate. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's panel contains the Freya who shows up again in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one story return in cottages, bars or legal settings in another.

These plot threads may sound complicated, but the author knows how to drive a narrative – his earlier successful Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been rendered into dozens languages. His straightforward prose bristles 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 Storytelling Power

Characters are portrayed in concise, impactful 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 narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange jabs over cups of weak tea.

The author's talent of bringing you fully into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a real frisson, for the first few times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is numbing, and at times nearly comic: suffering is piled on pain, chance on chance in a grim farce in which damaged survivors seem fated to encounter each other again and again for eternity.

Thematic Complexity and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds not exactly life and resembling purgatory, that is part of the author's point. These hurt people are oppressed by the crimes they have experienced, trapped in cycles of thought and behavior that agitate and descend and may in turn damage others. The author has talked about the impact of his individual experiences of abuse and he describes with understanding the way his cast negotiate this risky landscape, striving for solutions – solitude, frigid water immersion, reconciliation or invigorating honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "fundamental" framing isn't terribly instructive, while the rapid pace means the examination of gender dynamics or digital platforms is mainly shallow. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a entirely engaging, survivor-centered saga: a appreciated rebuttal to the usual fixation on detectives and offenders. The author illustrates how pain can affect lives and generations, and how time and tenderness can silence its aftereffects.