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Young Freya is visiting her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she comes across teenage twins. "Nothing better than being aware of a secret," they advise her, "is having one of your own." In the days that follow, they sexually assault her, then inter her while living, a mix of anxiety and irritation darting across their faces as they eventually release her from her temporary coffin.

This may have functioned as the disturbing main event of a novel, but it's merely a single of numerous awful events in The Elements, which assembles four short novels – issued separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate historical pain and try to discover peace in the contemporary moment.

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

The book's publication has been overshadowed by the addition of Earth, the second novella, on the preliminary list for a notable 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.

Debate of LGBTQ+ matters is absent from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of major issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the effect of conventional and digital platforms, caregiver abandonment and sexual violence are all examined.

Distinct Accounts of Suffering

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow transfers to a remote Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on legal proceedings as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya manages revenge with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a parent journeys to a burial with his teenage son, and ponders how much to reveal about his family's history.

Pain is layered with suffering as hurt survivors seem fated to bump into each other repeatedly for forever

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Links abound. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who reappears in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one narrative resurface in homes, bars or courtrooms in another.

These storylines may sound complex, but the author knows how to drive a narrative – his previous popular Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been translated into many languages. His straightforward prose sparkles with suspenseful hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to play with fire"; "the initial action I do when I reach the island is modify my name".

Personality Portrayal and Narrative Strength

Characters are portrayed in concise, powerful lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes echo with tragic power or insightful humour: a boy is hit by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade barbs over cups of diluted tea.

The author's talent of bringing you completely into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a real 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 pain, chance on chance in a grim farce in which wounded survivors seem doomed to bump into each other repeatedly for all time.

Conceptual Depth and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds different from life and resembling limbo, that is part of the author's thesis. These damaged people are weighed down by the crimes they have experienced, caught in patterns of thought and behavior that churn and descend and may in turn hurt others. The author has spoken about the effect of his individual experiences of mistreatment and he describes with compassion the way his ensemble traverse this perilous landscape, extending for treatments – isolation, frigid water immersion, forgiveness or invigorating honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "basic" concept isn't terribly educational, while the brisk pace means the examination of sexual politics or online networks is primarily shallow. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a thoroughly readable, victim-focused chronicle: a welcome riposte to the typical obsession on investigators and criminals. The author demonstrates how suffering can permeate lives and generations, and how years and tenderness can silence its aftereffects.