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

This may have functioned as the disturbing focal point of a novel, but it's just one of numerous terrible events in The Elements, which collects four short novels – issued individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate past trauma and try to discover peace in the contemporary moment.

Disputed Context and Subject Exploration

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

Debate of gender identity issues is absent from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of major issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the impact of mainstream and online outlets, parental neglect and assault are all investigated.

Four Narratives of Suffering

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow relocates to a remote Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on legal proceedings as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya juggles revenge with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a father travels to a funeral with his young son, and considers how much to disclose about his family's background.

Pain is piled on trauma as hurt survivors seem fated to bump into each other again and again for all time

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Relationships proliferate. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one story return in houses, pubs or legal settings in another.

These plot threads may sound complicated, but the author knows how to drive a narrative – his previous acclaimed Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been converted into many languages. His businesslike prose shines 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 arrive on the island is change my name".

Character Development and Narrative Strength

Characters are sketched in concise, impactful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes ring with sad power or observational humour: a boy is punched by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange insults over cups of watery tea.

The author's knack of transporting you fully into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an previous story a real excitement, for the first few times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is numbing, and at times nearly comic: trauma is layered with pain, coincidence on accident in a grim farce in which damaged survivors seem doomed to bump into each other repeatedly for eternity.

Thematic Complexity and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds less like life and more like uncertainty, that is part of the author's point. These wounded people are weighed down by the crimes they have endured, stuck in cycles of thought and behavior that stir and spiral and may in turn harm others. The author has discussed about the influence of his own experiences of harm and he portrays with compassion the way his cast negotiate this risky landscape, extending for treatments – solitude, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or refreshing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" structure isn't extremely informative, while the brisk pace means the discussion of sexual politics or social media is mainly surface-level. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a completely accessible, victim-focused chronicle: a valued rebuttal to the usual obsession on investigators and perpetrators. The author shows how suffering can permeate lives and generations, and how years and tenderness can quieten its echoes.