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Young Freya spends time with her distracted mother in Cornwall when she comes across teenage twins. "The only thing better than knowing a secret," they inform her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the time that ensue, they violate her, then entomb her breathing, a mix of unease and irritation passing across their faces as they finally release her from her improvised coffin.

This may have functioned as the shocking focal point of a novel, but it's merely a single of multiple terrible events in The Elements, which gathers four novelettes – issued separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate historical pain and try to achieve peace in the present moment.

Controversial 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, nearly all other nominees withdrew in protest at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Discussion of LGBTQ+ matters is absent from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. Homophobia, the effect of conventional and digital platforms, parental neglect and sexual violence are all investigated.

Four Stories of Suffering

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow moves to a isolated Irish island after her husband is jailed for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on court case as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya balances retaliation with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a dad travels to a funeral with his young son, and wonders how much to divulge about his family's past.

Suffering is accumulated upon pain as hurt survivors seem destined to encounter each other repeatedly for all time

Linked Stories

Connections proliferate. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to flee 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. Secondary characters from one account return in homes, taverns 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 direct prose bristles with suspenseful hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to play with fire"; "the first thing I do when I reach the island is change my name".

Character Portrayal and Storytelling Strength

Characters are drawn in succinct, powerful lines: the caring 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 punched by his father after urinating at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap barbs over cups of diluted 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 authentic frisson, for the initial several times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is dulling, and at times practically comic: pain is accumulated upon suffering, accident on coincidence in a grim farce in which hurt survivors seem fated to meet each other again and again for eternity.

Conceptual Depth and Final Assessment

If this sounds less like life and resembling uncertainty, that is part of the author's point. These damaged people are weighed down by the crimes they have suffered, trapped in cycles of thought and behavior that stir and descend and may in turn harm others. The author has discussed about the effect of his own experiences of abuse and he portrays with understanding the way his characters negotiate this perilous landscape, reaching out for solutions – solitude, icy sea dips, reconciliation or refreshing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "fundamental" structure isn't extremely informative, while the quick pace means the exploration of gender dynamics or social media is mostly shallow. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a entirely accessible, victim-focused saga: a valued riposte to the usual preoccupation on investigators and perpetrators. The author shows how trauma can affect lives and generations, and how years and tenderness can silence its reverberations.