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Young Freya spends time with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she comes across 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than knowing a secret," they inform her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the days that come after, they violate her, then inter her while living, a mix of unease and irritation flitting across their faces as they finally release her from her makeshift coffin.

This may have functioned as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's only one of many terrible events in The Elements, which collects four novelettes – released separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront previous suffering and try to find peace in the present moment.

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

The book's publication has been marred by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other contenders pulled out in protest at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Conversation of trans rights is not present from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of big issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the influence of conventional and digital platforms, caregiver abandonment and abuse are all examined.

Four Stories of Suffering

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow transfers to a isolated Irish island after her husband is jailed for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on legal proceedings as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya manages retaliation with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a father flies to a memorial service with his teenage son, and considers how much to reveal about his family's past.

Trauma is piled on suffering as wounded survivors seem destined to meet each other repeatedly for all time

Interconnected Narratives

Links abound. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's group 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 reappear in houses, bars or courtrooms in another.

These storylines may sound complicated, but the author knows how to power a narrative – his prior successful Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been rendered into dozens languages. His straightforward prose bristles with gripping hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to experiment with fire"; "the initial action I do when I come to the island is alter my name".

Character Development and Narrative Power

Characters are drawn in brief, effective lines: the caring 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 trade insults over cups of diluted tea.

The author's talent of carrying you completely into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an previous story a genuine excitement, for the initial several times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is numbing, and at times nearly comic: trauma is piled on pain, coincidence on chance in a dark farce in which wounded survivors seem destined to bump into each other again and again for forever.

Conceptual Complexity and Final Assessment

If this sounds not exactly life and resembling uncertainty, that is aspect of the author's message. These hurt people are burdened by the crimes they have experienced, stuck in routines of thought and behavior that stir and plunge and may in turn harm others. The author has discussed about the effect of his own experiences of harm and he portrays with understanding the way his ensemble negotiate this perilous landscape, extending for remedies – isolation, icy sea dips, resolution or refreshing honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "basic" concept isn't terribly educational, while the rapid pace means the exploration of sexual politics or social media is mainly superficial. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a completely accessible, survivor-centered chronicle: a welcome rebuttal to the usual fixation on authorities and perpetrators. The author illustrates how trauma can permeate lives and generations, and how duration and care can silence its echoes.