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Young Freya is visiting her distracted mother in Cornwall when she comes across teenage twins. "The only thing better than knowing a secret," they tell her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the weeks that follow, they will rape her, then entomb her breathing, combination of anxiety and annoyance darting across their faces as they eventually liberate her from her improvised coffin.

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

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

The book's release has been overshadowed by the inclusion of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other contenders pulled out in protest at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been called off.

Debate of LGBTQ+ matters is missing from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of significant issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the effect of traditional and social media, parental neglect and abuse are all explored.

Four Accounts of Suffering

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow relocates to a isolated Irish island after her husband is jailed for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on legal proceedings as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya juggles retaliation with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a dad journeys to a burial with his young son, and considers how much to reveal about his family's history.

Suffering is piled on trauma as damaged survivors seem fated to bump into each other continuously for eternity

Linked Accounts

Connections proliferate. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to leave the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who shows up again in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, collaborates with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one story return in homes, bars or judicial venues in another.

These plot threads may sound tangled, but the author is skilled at how to power a narrative – his earlier successful Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been converted into dozens languages. His direct prose bristles with suspenseful hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to toy with fire"; "the primary step I do when I arrive on the island is modify my name".

Personality Portrayal and Narrative Power

Characters are portrayed in concise, powerful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes resonate with tragic power or observational humour: a boy is hit 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 watery tea.

The author's ability of bringing you fully into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an previous story a genuine excitement, for the initial several times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is numbing, and at times practically comic: suffering is piled on pain, chance on chance in a dark farce in which wounded survivors seem fated to encounter each other repeatedly for all time.

Conceptual Depth and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds different from life and resembling purgatory, that is element of the author's point. These hurt people are burdened by the crimes they have endured, trapped in routines of thought and behavior that churn and descend and may in turn harm others. The author has spoken about the influence of his own experiences of abuse and he depicts with sympathy the way his cast negotiate this perilous landscape, striving for solutions – isolation, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or refreshing honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "elemental" framing isn't terribly educational, while the quick pace means the exploration of gender dynamics or online networks is primarily superficial. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a entirely readable, survivor-centered chronicle: a valued rebuttal to the typical preoccupation on investigators and perpetrators. The author illustrates how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how duration and tenderness can quieten its echoes.