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Young Freya is visiting her distracted mother in Cornwall when she comes across 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they advise her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the time that ensue, they violate her, then bury her alive, a mix of unease and frustration darting across their faces as they ultimately release her from her temporary coffin.

This could have served as the disturbing main event of a novel, but it's just one of multiple awful events in The Elements, which collects four novellas – released individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate previous suffering and try to achieve peace in the contemporary moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's publication has been overshadowed by the inclusion of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a prominent LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other contenders withdrew in dissent at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been called off.

Conversation of gender identity issues is absent from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of significant issues. Homophobia, the effect of conventional and digital platforms, family disregard and abuse are all investigated.

Multiple Stories of Trauma

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow moves to a remote Irish island after her husband is jailed for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on trial as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya juggles vengeance with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a parent travels to a burial with his young son, and considers how much to divulge about his family's background.

Pain is piled on suffering as wounded survivors seem fated to bump into each other continuously for forever

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Relationships multiply. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who shows up again in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one account return in homes, taverns or judicial venues in another.

These storylines may sound complicated, but the author knows how to propel a narrative – his prior acclaimed Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been rendered into numerous languages. His businesslike prose bristles with thriller-ish hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to play with fire"; "the primary step I do when I come to the island is alter my name".

Character Portrayal and Narrative Strength

Characters are drawn in brief, effective lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes echo with tragic power or observational humour: a boy is punched by his father after having an accident at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap jabs over cups of watery tea.

The author's knack of bringing you completely into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an previous story a authentic frisson, for the first few times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is dulling, and at times nearly comic: pain is piled on pain, accident on coincidence in a grim farce in which wounded survivors seem fated to bump into each other repeatedly for forever.

Conceptual Complexity and Final Evaluation

If this sounds different from life and resembling purgatory, that is part of the author's thesis. These wounded people are burdened by the crimes they have suffered, caught in cycles of thought and behavior that agitate and descend and may in turn hurt others. The author has spoken about the influence of his personal experiences of mistreatment and he portrays with sympathy the way his ensemble traverse this perilous landscape, striving for treatments – seclusion, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or invigorating honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "elemental" concept isn't particularly informative, while the rapid pace means the discussion of sexual politics or digital platforms is primarily superficial. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a entirely accessible, survivor-centered epic: a appreciated rebuttal to the common obsession on detectives and perpetrators. The author demonstrates how trauma can permeate lives and generations, and how years and tenderness can soften its echoes.