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Twelve-year-old 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, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the days that come after, they will rape her, then bury her alive, combination of unease and frustration passing across their faces as they ultimately release her from her temporary coffin.

This might have stood as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's merely a single of numerous terrible events in The Elements, which assembles four novellas – published separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate past trauma and try to discover peace in the present moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's publication has been marred by the inclusion of Earth, the second novella, on the preliminary list for a prominent LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other candidates withdrew in dissent at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Debate of gender identity issues is not present from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the impact of mainstream and online outlets, parental neglect and sexual violence are all explored.

Multiple Accounts of Pain

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow relocates to a isolated Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on trial as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya balances revenge with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a dad travels to a burial with his adolescent son, and considers how much to divulge about his family's history.

Trauma is piled on suffering as hurt survivors seem fated to meet each other repeatedly for all time

Interconnected Stories

Connections proliferate. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, collaborates with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one account resurface in houses, taverns or courtrooms in another.

These storylines may sound complicated, but the author understands how to propel a narrative – his prior successful Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been rendered into dozens languages. His businesslike prose bristles with thriller-ish hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to play with fire"; "the primary step I do when I reach the island is alter my name".

Character Portrayal and Storytelling Strength

Characters are drawn in succinct, effective lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes echo with tragic power or perceptive humour: a boy is struck by his father after having an accident at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange barbs over cups of watery tea.

The author's knack of transporting you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an prior story a genuine frisson, for the first few times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is dulling, and at times almost comic: suffering is layered with pain, coincidence on coincidence in a grim farce in which hurt survivors seem doomed to encounter each other repeatedly for eternity.

Thematic Complexity and Final Evaluation

If this sounds less like life and closer to purgatory, that is part of the author's point. These hurt people are weighed down by the crimes they have suffered, stuck in routines of thought and behavior that stir and plunge and may in turn hurt others. The author has talked about the influence of his personal experiences of harm and he describes with compassion the way his ensemble traverse this risky landscape, reaching out for solutions – isolation, frigid water immersion, forgiveness or invigorating honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "basic" structure isn't particularly informative, while the rapid pace means the examination of sexual politics or online networks is mostly shallow. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a entirely engaging, victim-focused epic: a appreciated rebuttal to the usual preoccupation on investigators and offenders. The author shows how suffering can permeate lives and generations, and how time and care can silence its echoes.