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Twelve-year-old Freya is visiting her distracted mother in Cornwall when she comes across teenage twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they tell her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the weeks that ensue, they sexually assault her, then entomb her breathing, combination of nervousness and annoyance passing across their faces as they ultimately free her from her improvised coffin.

This might have stood as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's just one of many terrible events in The Elements, which assembles four novellas – issued separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate previous suffering and try to find peace in the current moment.

Disputed Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's issuance has been clouded by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a prominent LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other candidates dropped out in dissent at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been called off.

Discussion of LGBTQ+ matters is not present from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of significant issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the impact of mainstream and online outlets, family disregard and sexual violence are all examined.

Multiple Accounts of Trauma

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow moves to a secluded Irish island after her husband is jailed for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on court case as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya manages revenge with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a parent flies to a burial with his young son, and considers how much to reveal about his family's past.

Pain is piled on pain as damaged survivors seem doomed to meet each other again and again for forever

Interconnected Accounts

Connections multiply. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's panel contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Supporting characters from one story reappear in cottages, taverns or judicial venues in another.

These plot threads may sound complicated, but the author knows how to propel a narrative – his prior popular Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been converted into many languages. His direct prose bristles with thriller-ish hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to experiment with fire"; "the primary step I do when I arrive on the island is alter my name".

Personality Development and Narrative Strength

Characters are drawn in concise, impactful lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes ring with sad power or insightful 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 swap insults over cups of diluted tea.

The author's knack of transporting you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an previous story a genuine thrill, for the first few times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times almost comic: pain is piled on pain, coincidence on chance in a grim farce in which damaged survivors seem destined to encounter each other again and again for all time.

Conceptual Complexity and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds different from life and resembling limbo, that is element of the author's point. These damaged people are weighed down by the crimes they have experienced, trapped in cycles of thought and behavior that stir and plunge and may in turn damage others. The author has talked about the effect of his individual experiences of harm and he portrays with sympathy the way his ensemble traverse this perilous landscape, reaching out for remedies – solitude, frigid water immersion, forgiveness or bracing honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "basic" structure isn't particularly educational, while the brisk pace means the examination of social issues or online networks is primarily shallow. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a completely accessible, survivor-centered saga: a welcome riposte to the typical preoccupation on authorities and perpetrators. The author demonstrates how trauma can affect lives and generations, and how duration and compassion can soften its aftereffects.