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Twelve-year-old Freya is visiting her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she meets 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than knowing a secret," they advise her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the time that ensue, they violate her, then bury her alive, a mix of nervousness and frustration darting across their faces as they finally liberate her from her temporary coffin.

This could have served as the jarring focal point of a novel, but it's just one of many awful events in The Elements, which collects four novellas – released separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate past trauma and try to find peace in the present moment.

Disputed Context and Subject Exploration

The book's publication has been marred by the presence of Earth, the second novella, on the longlist for a prominent LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other contenders dropped out in dissent at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been called off.

Discussion of gender identity issues is not present from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the influence of conventional and digital platforms, caregiver abandonment and abuse are all explored.

Multiple Narratives of Trauma

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow moves to a secluded Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on legal proceedings as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya balances revenge with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a dad travels to a burial with his young son, and considers how much to disclose about his family's background.

Trauma is piled on pain as hurt survivors seem fated to encounter each other repeatedly for eternity

Related Narratives

Connections proliferate. We initially encounter 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, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one account resurface in homes, pubs or courtrooms in another.

These storylines may sound complex, but the author understands how to propel a narrative – his earlier successful Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been translated into dozens languages. His straightforward prose bristles with thriller-ish hooks: "in the end, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to play with fire"; "the first thing I do when I reach the island is modify my name".

Personality Portrayal and Narrative Strength

Characters are portrayed in brief, powerful lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes resonate with tragic power or insightful humour: a boy is hit by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange jabs over cups of diluted tea.

The author's ability of bringing you completely into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an previous story a authentic excitement, for the initial several times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is numbing, and at times practically comic: pain is accumulated upon pain, chance on coincidence in a grim farce in which hurt survivors seem doomed to encounter each other again and again for forever.

Conceptual Complexity and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds less like life and more like purgatory, that is part of the author's thesis. These damaged people are oppressed by the crimes they have experienced, caught in cycles of thought and behavior that churn and plunge and may in turn damage others. The author has discussed about the impact of his individual experiences of abuse and he depicts with understanding the way his characters negotiate this perilous landscape, striving for remedies – solitude, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or bracing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "basic" framing isn't terribly instructive, while the quick pace means the exploration of social issues or social media is mainly surface-level. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a entirely accessible, victim-focused chronicle: a valued riposte to the common obsession on authorities and perpetrators. The author shows how pain can permeate lives and generations, and how duration and tenderness can silence its reverberations.