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Twelve-year-old Freya is visiting her distracted mother in Cornwall when she encounters 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 follow, they violate her, then bury her alive, a mix of anxiety and irritation darting across their faces as they finally liberate her from her temporary coffin.

This could have served as the disturbing main event of a novel, but it's only one of numerous awful events in The Elements, which gathers four short novels – published separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront past trauma and try to find peace in the contemporary moment.

Disputed 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, most other contenders withdrew in protest at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been called off.

Debate of trans rights is absent from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of big issues. Homophobia, the influence of mainstream and online outlets, family disregard and sexual violence are all examined.

Multiple Narratives of Trauma

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow relocates to a isolated Irish island after her husband is jailed for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on legal proceedings as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya manages retaliation with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a dad flies to a memorial service with his young son, and wonders how much to disclose about his family's history.

Pain is layered with pain as damaged survivors seem doomed to encounter each other again and again for all time

Linked Accounts

Links multiply. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to leave the island of Water. His trial's panel contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, collaborates with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one account reappear in homes, pubs or judicial venues in another.

These plot threads may sound complicated, but the author is skilled at how to power a narrative – his prior successful Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been converted into numerous languages. His businesslike prose shines with suspenseful 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".

Character Development and Storytelling Power

Characters are sketched in succinct, powerful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes echo with tragic power or observational humour: a boy is hit by his father after having an accident at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange insults over cups of diluted tea.

The author's ability of bringing you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a genuine frisson, for the initial several times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times almost comic: suffering is accumulated upon suffering, coincidence on coincidence in a grim farce in which hurt survivors seem fated to encounter each other repeatedly for all time.

Thematic Complexity and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds different from life and closer to limbo, that is aspect of the author's point. These damaged people are weighed down by the crimes they have endured, trapped in routines of thought and behavior that agitate and descend and may in turn damage others. The author has talked about the effect of his personal experiences of harm and he depicts with compassion the way his ensemble traverse this dangerous landscape, extending for solutions – seclusion, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or bracing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" concept isn't terribly educational, while the quick pace means the exploration of sexual politics or social media is mostly surface-level. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a completely readable, trauma-oriented saga: a welcome rebuttal to the common obsession on investigators and criminals. The author demonstrates how suffering can permeate lives and generations, and how years and care can soften its reverberations.