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Twelve-year-old Freya spends time with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she encounters 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than being aware of a secret," they advise her, "is having one of your own." In the time that come after, they violate her, then inter her while living, blend of unease and frustration passing across their faces as they eventually free her from her makeshift coffin.

This could have served as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's just one of multiple terrible events in The Elements, which collects four short novels – issued distinctly between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate past trauma and try to find peace in the current moment.

Disputed Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's release has been clouded by the addition of Earth, the second novella, on the candidate list for a prominent LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other contenders dropped out in protest at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Discussion of trans rights is not present from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of significant issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the effect of conventional and digital platforms, family disregard and assault are all examined.

Four Narratives of Trauma

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow transfers to a remote Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on legal proceedings as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya manages revenge with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a parent journeys to a memorial service with his young son, and ponders how much to disclose about his family's background.

Suffering is layered with suffering as wounded survivors seem doomed to encounter each other again and again for all time

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Connections multiply. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who reappears in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, collaborates with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one narrative return in houses, taverns or courtrooms in another.

These narrative elements may sound complicated, but the author is skilled at how to drive a narrative – his prior acclaimed Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been converted into numerous languages. His direct prose sparkles with thriller-ish hooks: "in the end, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to experiment with fire"; "the first thing I do when I come to the island is alter my name".

Personality Portrayal and Storytelling Power

Characters are portrayed in brief, effective lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes echo with melancholy power or observational humour: a boy is hit by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap insults over cups of weak tea.

The author's talent of bringing you completely into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a real excitement, for the opening times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is numbing, and at times practically comic: pain is layered with suffering, coincidence on coincidence in a bleak farce in which damaged survivors seem fated to encounter each other again and again for eternity.

Conceptual Complexity and Final Evaluation

If this sounds not exactly life and more like purgatory, that is element of the author's thesis. These wounded people are oppressed by the crimes they have experienced, stuck in cycles of thought and behavior that stir and descend and may in turn hurt others. The author has spoken about the influence of his individual experiences of mistreatment and he portrays with compassion the way his ensemble negotiate this risky landscape, striving for treatments – solitude, icy sea dips, reconciliation or invigorating honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "elemental" structure isn't particularly informative, while the brisk pace means the discussion of social issues or social media is mostly shallow. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a completely accessible, trauma-oriented epic: a valued riposte to the typical obsession on detectives and criminals. The author illustrates how suffering can run through lives and generations, and how duration and care can quieten its aftereffects.