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Young Freya stays with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she comes across teenage twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they inform her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the days that ensue, they will rape her, then entomb her breathing, blend of anxiety and frustration darting across their faces as they ultimately liberate her from her makeshift coffin.

This could have served as the disturbing focal point of a novel, but it's just one of numerous awful events in The Elements, which collects four novelettes – released individually 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 release has been overshadowed by the addition of Earth, the second novella, on the preliminary list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other nominees dropped out in dissent at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Discussion of trans rights is absent from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of major issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the effect of conventional and digital platforms, family disregard and assault are all examined.

Multiple Narratives of Suffering

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow moves to a remote Irish island after her husband is jailed for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on court case as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya manages vengeance with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a father journeys to a burial with his young son, and ponders how much to disclose about his family's history.

Suffering is piled on trauma as hurt survivors seem doomed to encounter each other again and again for eternity

Related Narratives

Relationships proliferate. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to leave 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 reappear in houses, taverns or courtrooms in another.

These narrative elements may sound complicated, but the author understands how to drive a narrative – his previous successful Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been rendered into many languages. His direct prose bristles 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 alter my name".

Character Portrayal and Storytelling Power

Characters are sketched in concise, powerful lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes ring with tragic power or insightful humour: a boy is struck by his father after urinating at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade insults over cups of weak tea.

The author's knack of transporting you completely into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an prior story a real thrill, for the first few times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times almost comic: pain is layered with pain, coincidence on coincidence in a bleak farce in which wounded survivors seem fated to encounter each other again and again for all time.

Thematic Complexity and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds different from life and more like limbo, that is aspect of the author's point. These damaged people are burdened by the crimes they have endured, stuck in routines of thought and behavior that churn and plunge and may in turn damage others. The author has talked about the effect of his own experiences of harm and he describes with compassion the way his ensemble traverse this perilous landscape, extending for remedies – isolation, frigid water immersion, resolution or invigorating honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" structure isn't particularly instructive, while the rapid pace means the examination of sexual politics or social media is mostly superficial. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a entirely readable, trauma-oriented epic: a appreciated response to the typical obsession on detectives and offenders. The author illustrates how suffering can affect lives and generations, and how duration and care can silence its aftereffects.