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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 advise her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the weeks that come after, they violate her, then inter her while living, combination of anxiety and annoyance passing across their faces as they eventually liberate her from her improvised coffin.

This may have functioned as the disturbing main event of a novel, but it's only one of numerous awful events in The Elements, which assembles four novellas – published separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront previous suffering and try to discover peace in the present moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's publication has been overshadowed by the inclusion of Earth, the second novella, on the longlist for a prominent LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other candidates pulled out in dissent at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Discussion of trans rights is missing from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of big issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the influence of mainstream and online outlets, caregiver abandonment and assault are all investigated.

Four Narratives of Suffering

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow transfers to a isolated Irish island after her husband is jailed for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on court case as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya manages revenge with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a dad flies to a burial with his teenage son, and ponders how much to disclose about his family's history.

Pain is layered with trauma as damaged survivors seem doomed to encounter each other continuously for all time

Linked Stories

Links abound. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to leave the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one story resurface in cottages, pubs or courtrooms in another.

These storylines may sound complex, but the author understands how to power a narrative – his previous successful Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been rendered into dozens languages. His straightforward prose sparkles with suspenseful hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to toy with fire"; "the first thing I do when I arrive on the island is change my name".

Personality Development and Narrative Power

Characters are sketched in brief, powerful lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes echo with tragic power or insightful humour: a boy is struck by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap jabs over cups of weak tea.

The author's knack of bringing you fully into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a real excitement, for the first few times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times practically comic: suffering is layered with suffering, coincidence on chance in a dark farce in which wounded survivors seem fated to meet each other repeatedly for eternity.

Conceptual Complexity and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds less like life and more like purgatory, that is part of the author's message. These hurt people are burdened by the crimes they have endured, caught in patterns of thought and behavior that churn and spiral and may in turn harm others. The author has spoken about the effect of his personal experiences of harm and he describes with compassion the way his cast traverse this dangerous landscape, reaching out for treatments – isolation, frigid water immersion, reconciliation or invigorating honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "elemental" framing isn't terribly informative, while the brisk pace means the discussion of gender dynamics or digital platforms is mainly superficial. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a completely readable, survivor-centered saga: a appreciated riposte to the common fixation on detectives and perpetrators. The author demonstrates how pain can run through lives and generations, and how time and care can silence its aftereffects.