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Twelve-year-old Freya spends time with her distracted mother in Cornwall when she meets teenage twins. "The only thing better than knowing a secret," they inform her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the days that ensue, they sexually assault her, then inter her while living, combination of anxiety and frustration flitting across their faces as they finally release her from her improvised coffin.

This might have stood as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's just one of many horrific events in The Elements, which gathers four novellas – issued distinctly between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront historical pain and try to discover peace in the contemporary moment.

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

The book's release has been clouded by the inclusion of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the longlist for a prominent LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other nominees dropped out in protest at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Conversation of LGBTQ+ matters is absent from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of big issues. Homophobia, the influence of traditional and social media, caregiver abandonment and sexual violence are all explored.

Distinct Stories of Trauma

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow moves to a isolated Irish island after her husband is jailed for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on legal proceedings as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya juggles vengeance with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a parent travels to a funeral with his teenage son, and ponders how much to divulge about his family's history.

Trauma is piled on pain as damaged survivors seem destined to bump into each other again and again for forever

Linked Stories

Links multiply. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to leave the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who reappears in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one story reappear in houses, bars or judicial venues in another.

These narrative elements may sound tangled, but the author is skilled at how to drive a narrative – his previous popular Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been converted into numerous languages. His straightforward prose bristles with thriller-ish hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to toy with fire"; "the primary step I do when I come to the island is alter my name".

Character Development and Narrative Strength

Characters are sketched in succinct, effective lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes echo with sad power or observational humour: a boy is punched by his father after having an accident at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade jabs over cups of watery tea.

The author's ability of bringing you completely into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a authentic excitement, for the initial several times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is numbing, and at times nearly comic: suffering is layered with suffering, coincidence on accident in a grim farce in which hurt survivors seem fated to bump into each other repeatedly for eternity.

Conceptual Complexity and Final Evaluation

If this sounds not exactly life and more like limbo, that is aspect of the author's thesis. These wounded people are oppressed by the crimes they have suffered, trapped in cycles of thought and behavior that stir and plunge and may in turn damage others. The author has talked about the influence of his own experiences of harm and he describes with sympathy the way his characters negotiate this risky landscape, reaching out for treatments – seclusion, frigid water immersion, reconciliation or bracing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "basic" framing isn't extremely instructive, while the quick pace means the discussion of sexual politics or digital platforms is mostly surface-level. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a thoroughly accessible, survivor-centered epic: a appreciated rebuttal to the common preoccupation on authorities and criminals. The author shows how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how time and care can quieten its reverberations.