🔗 Share this article

Twelve-year-old Freya is visiting her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she encounters 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than being aware of a secret," they inform her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the weeks that come after, they sexually assault her, then entomb her breathing, blend of nervousness and irritation darting across their faces as they finally release her from her temporary coffin.

This might have stood as the jarring centrepiece of a novel, but it's just one of multiple awful events in The Elements, which gathers four novelettes – published distinctly between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate previous suffering and try to discover peace in the present moment.

Disputed Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's issuance has been clouded by the inclusion of Earth, the second novella, on the preliminary list for a prominent LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other contenders pulled out in dissent at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Debate of gender identity issues is absent from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of major issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the influence of conventional and digital platforms, caregiver abandonment and sexual violence are all investigated.

Four Accounts of Pain

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow transfers to a isolated Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on court case as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya juggles revenge with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a parent flies to a funeral with his teenage son, and ponders how much to disclose about his family's history.

Pain is piled on pain as hurt survivors seem doomed to encounter each other repeatedly for eternity

Interconnected Narratives

Links proliferate. We originally see 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, collaborates with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Supporting characters from one story return in cottages, pubs or judicial venues in another.

These narrative elements may sound tangled, but the author understands how to propel a narrative – his previous successful Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been rendered into dozens languages. His businesslike prose shines with suspenseful hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to toy with fire"; "the first thing I do when I come to the island is alter my name".

Character Portrayal and Storytelling Power

Characters are sketched in succinct, effective lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes echo with tragic power or perceptive humour: a boy is struck by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange barbs over cups of diluted tea.

The author's talent of transporting you fully into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a authentic excitement, for the opening times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is dulling, and at times nearly comic: trauma is piled on suffering, chance on coincidence in a grim farce in which hurt survivors seem destined to bump into each other continuously for eternity.

Conceptual Depth and Final Evaluation

If this sounds not exactly life and closer to limbo, that is part of the author's point. These damaged people are oppressed by the crimes they have endured, caught in patterns of thought and behavior that stir and plunge and may in turn hurt others. The author has discussed about the effect of his own experiences of harm and he describes with understanding the way his characters traverse this risky landscape, striving for treatments – solitude, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or invigorating honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "basic" structure isn't terribly educational, while the quick pace means the exploration of gender dynamics or digital platforms is mostly surface-level. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a entirely engaging, survivor-centered chronicle: a welcome response to the common preoccupation on investigators and perpetrators. The author demonstrates how suffering can permeate lives and generations, and how duration and care can quieten its aftereffects.