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Twelve-year-old Freya is visiting her distracted mother in Cornwall when she encounters 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they inform her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the time that come after, they violate her, then bury her alive, blend of anxiety and irritation flitting across their faces as they ultimately release her from her temporary coffin.

This could have served as the shocking centrepiece of a novel, but it's just one of many awful events in The Elements, which gathers four novellas – issued individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate past trauma and try to find peace in the present moment.

Debated Context and Subject Exploration

The book's release has been marred by the inclusion of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the longlist for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other contenders pulled out in dissent at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Conversation of gender identity issues is absent from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of big issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the influence of traditional and social media, family disregard and abuse are all explored.

Multiple Accounts of Pain

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow relocates to a isolated Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on legal proceedings as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya balances revenge with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a father journeys to a burial with his adolescent son, and ponders how much to disclose about his family's background.

Pain is accumulated upon suffering as wounded survivors seem destined to meet each other again and again for eternity

Linked Stories

Connections abound. 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, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Supporting characters from one story resurface in cottages, bars or courtrooms in another.

These storylines may sound complex, but the author is skilled at how to power a narrative – his prior popular Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been rendered into numerous languages. His direct prose sparkles with thriller-ish hooks: "in the end, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to experiment with fire"; "the initial action I do when I come to the island is modify my name".

Personality Development and Storytelling Power

Characters are sketched in succinct, impactful lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes ring with sad power or insightful humour: a boy is hit by his father after having an accident at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap barbs over cups of diluted tea.

The author's talent of carrying you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a genuine excitement, for the first few times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times almost comic: suffering is piled on pain, chance on accident in a bleak farce in which wounded survivors seem destined to bump into each other again and again for all time.

Conceptual Depth and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds not exactly life and more like limbo, that is aspect of the author's point. These hurt people are weighed down by the crimes they have experienced, caught in cycles of thought and behavior that stir and spiral and may in turn damage others. The author has talked about the effect of his individual experiences of mistreatment and he portrays with compassion the way his ensemble negotiate this risky landscape, extending for treatments – isolation, icy sea dips, reconciliation or refreshing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "fundamental" structure isn't extremely educational, while the quick pace means the exploration of social issues or social media is mainly shallow. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a entirely accessible, survivor-centered chronicle: a valued riposte to the common obsession on authorities and offenders. The author shows how trauma can permeate lives and generations, and how years and care can silence its aftereffects.