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Young Freya is visiting her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she comes across 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than being aware of a secret," they inform her, "is having one of your own." In the time that come after, they will rape her, then inter her while living, combination of anxiety and irritation flitting across their faces as they eventually liberate her from her improvised coffin.

This might have stood as the shocking focal point of a novel, but it's merely a single of many terrible events in The Elements, which collects four short novels – released separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront historical pain and try to find peace in the contemporary moment.

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

The book's publication has been overshadowed by the presence of Earth, the second novella, on the preliminary list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other candidates withdrew in objection at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Debate of trans rights is missing from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of significant issues. Homophobia, the influence of traditional and social media, caregiver abandonment and sexual violence are all examined.

Multiple Stories of Pain

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow relocates to a remote Irish island after her husband is jailed for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on trial as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya manages vengeance with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a father journeys to a funeral with his adolescent son, and wonders how much to reveal about his family's background.

Pain is layered with pain as damaged survivors seem doomed to meet each other continuously for all time

Interconnected Accounts

Links proliferate. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to flee 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. Secondary characters from one story return in cottages, bars or judicial venues in another.

These plot threads may sound complex, but the author knows how to power a narrative – his earlier acclaimed Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been rendered into many languages. His direct prose shines with thriller-ish hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to experiment with fire"; "the initial action I do when I come to the island is change my name".

Character Development and Storytelling Power

Characters are portrayed in concise, effective lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes echo with sad power or insightful humour: a boy is punched by his father after having an accident at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade insults over cups of diluted tea.

The author's knack of carrying you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an previous story a authentic thrill, for the first few times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is dulling, and at times practically comic: pain is layered with pain, accident on coincidence in a grim farce in which wounded survivors seem fated to meet each other continuously for eternity.

Conceptual Depth and Final Assessment

If this sounds different from life and closer to limbo, that is part of the author's thesis. These wounded people are oppressed by the crimes they have suffered, caught in cycles of thought and behavior that stir and descend and may in turn hurt others. The author has spoken about the impact of his personal experiences of abuse and he describes with sympathy the way his cast negotiate this dangerous landscape, striving for solutions – seclusion, icy sea dips, reconciliation or refreshing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "basic" structure isn't extremely informative, while the quick pace means the discussion of sexual politics or digital platforms is primarily surface-level. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a completely engaging, trauma-oriented saga: a valued riposte to the common preoccupation on detectives and criminals. The author shows how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how duration and tenderness can quieten its reverberations.