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Twelve-year-old Freya stays with her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she encounters 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they tell her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the days that ensue, they will rape her, then inter her while living, a mix of anxiety and annoyance darting across their faces as they finally release her from her makeshift coffin.

This could have served as the disturbing main event of a novel, but it's only one of multiple awful events in The Elements, which collects four novelettes – published individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront previous suffering and try to discover peace in the contemporary moment.

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

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

Conversation of LGBTQ+ matters is absent from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of major issues. Homophobia, the impact of traditional and social media, parental neglect and abuse are all examined.

Four Stories of Pain

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow moves to a isolated Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on trial 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 young son, and ponders how much to divulge about his family's history.

Suffering is layered with pain as damaged survivors seem doomed to bump into each other repeatedly for forever

Related Stories

Relationships multiply. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who reappears in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, collaborates with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Supporting characters from one account resurface in cottages, pubs or courtrooms in another.

These plot threads may sound tangled, but the author knows how to power a narrative – his previous popular Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been translated into numerous languages. His straightforward prose shines with gripping hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to experiment with fire"; "the first thing I do when I arrive on the island is alter my name".

Character Portrayal and Storytelling Power

Characters are drawn in brief, powerful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes ring with tragic power or observational humour: a boy is hit by his father after having an accident at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap insults over cups of watery tea.

The author's talent of transporting you fully into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an previous story a genuine thrill, for the initial several times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times practically comic: trauma is piled on pain, chance on chance in a grim farce in which hurt survivors seem doomed to meet each other continuously for eternity.

Conceptual Depth and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds less like life and more like purgatory, that is aspect of the author's point. These hurt people are burdened by the crimes they have experienced, stuck in routines of thought and behavior that stir and spiral and may in turn hurt others. The author has talked about the effect of his individual experiences of abuse and he portrays with compassion the way his cast traverse this dangerous landscape, striving for remedies – seclusion, cold ocean swims, resolution or refreshing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "fundamental" structure isn't terribly informative, while the quick pace means the examination of sexual politics or digital platforms is mainly shallow. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a completely accessible, victim-focused saga: a appreciated response to the common preoccupation on detectives and perpetrators. The author demonstrates how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how years and care can soften its reverberations.