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Twelve-year-old Freya spends time with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she encounters teenage twins. "Nothing better than being aware of a secret," they tell her, "is having one of your own." In the days that follow, they sexually assault her, then entomb her breathing, combination of unease and annoyance passing across their faces as they finally liberate her from her improvised coffin.

This might have stood as the disturbing main event of a novel, but it's just one of numerous awful events in The Elements, which assembles four novelettes – published separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate previous suffering and try to achieve peace in the current moment.

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

The book's publication has been clouded by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the longlist for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other nominees withdrew in protest at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Debate of trans rights is absent from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of big issues. Homophobia, the influence of traditional and social media, parental neglect and sexual violence are all explored.

Distinct Stories of Trauma

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow moves to a isolated Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on legal proceedings as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya juggles vengeance with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a father journeys to a funeral with his young son, and considers how much to disclose about his family's history.

Trauma is piled on pain as hurt survivors seem fated to meet each other continuously for all time

Linked Stories

Relationships proliferate. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's jury 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. Supporting characters from one account reappear in homes, pubs or legal settings in another.

These plot threads may sound tangled, but the author understands how to drive a narrative – his previous popular Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been converted into numerous languages. His businesslike prose shines with suspenseful hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to experiment with fire"; "the first thing I do when I come to the island is modify my name".

Personality Development and Narrative Power

Characters are sketched in succinct, effective lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes ring with melancholy power or perceptive humour: a boy is struck by his father after having an accident at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap jabs over cups of watery tea.

The author's knack of transporting you fully into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a genuine thrill, for the initial several times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is dulling, and at times nearly comic: suffering is accumulated upon pain, chance on coincidence in a grim farce in which hurt survivors seem doomed to bump into each other continuously for forever.

Conceptual Complexity and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds different from life and more like uncertainty, that is part of the author's thesis. These wounded people are oppressed by the crimes they have experienced, trapped in patterns of thought and behavior that churn and plunge and may in turn damage others. The author has spoken about the influence of his individual experiences of mistreatment and he depicts with compassion the way his cast navigate this dangerous landscape, reaching out for remedies – seclusion, icy sea dips, forgiveness or refreshing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "elemental" structure isn't extremely instructive, while the quick pace means the discussion of gender dynamics or digital platforms is primarily surface-level. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a thoroughly accessible, trauma-oriented epic: a valued rebuttal to the common fixation on detectives and criminals. The author demonstrates how suffering can permeate lives and generations, and how years and tenderness can quieten its aftereffects.