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Twelve-year-old Freya is visiting her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she comes across teenage twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they tell her, "is having one of your own." In the weeks that come after, they violate her, then entomb her breathing, combination of nervousness and irritation passing across their faces as they finally liberate her from her temporary coffin.

This may have functioned as the disturbing centrepiece of a novel, but it's just one of numerous terrible events in The Elements, which assembles four novelettes – issued separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate previous suffering and try to discover peace in the current moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's issuance has been marred by the inclusion of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the longlist for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other contenders withdrew in objection at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Debate of LGBTQ+ matters is absent from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the influence of mainstream and online outlets, family disregard and sexual violence are all explored.

Four Narratives of Suffering

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow moves to a remote Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on court case as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya manages vengeance with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a father journeys to a memorial service with his teenage son, and wonders how much to reveal about his family's history.

Trauma is accumulated upon trauma as wounded survivors seem fated to bump into each other repeatedly for eternity

Related Narratives

Connections multiply. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who reappears 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 homes, taverns or judicial venues in another.

These narrative elements may sound complicated, but the author is skilled at how to propel a narrative – his previous acclaimed Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been converted into numerous languages. His direct prose shines with suspenseful hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to toy with fire"; "the initial action I do when I arrive on the island is modify my name".

Personality Portrayal and Narrative Strength

Characters are drawn in brief, powerful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes ring with sad power or observational humour: a boy is struck 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 ability of transporting you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an previous story a real excitement, for the initial several times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is numbing, and at times nearly comic: trauma is accumulated upon suffering, coincidence on coincidence in a grim farce in which hurt survivors seem doomed to encounter each other continuously for eternity.

Thematic Complexity and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds less like life and more like uncertainty, that is aspect of the author's message. These damaged people are oppressed by the crimes they have endured, stuck in patterns of thought and behavior that agitate and spiral and may in turn harm others. The author has spoken about the effect of his own experiences of mistreatment and he describes with understanding the way his characters navigate this dangerous landscape, striving for treatments – seclusion, icy sea dips, reconciliation or bracing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "elemental" structure isn't extremely instructive, while the brisk pace means the discussion of sexual politics or online networks is primarily surface-level. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a entirely accessible, victim-focused saga: a welcome response to the common fixation on authorities and perpetrators. The author illustrates how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how duration and tenderness can soften its echoes.