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Twelve-year-old Freya stays with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she meets 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they advise her, "is having one of your own." In the days that ensue, they will rape her, then bury her alive, combination of unease and annoyance flitting across their faces as they finally free her from her improvised coffin.

This may have functioned as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's only one of multiple awful events in The Elements, which gathers four novelettes – published distinctly between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront previous suffering and try to find 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 notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other contenders withdrew in dissent at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Conversation of trans rights is missing from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the impact of traditional and social media, family disregard and sexual violence are all examined.

Distinct Stories of Pain

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow moves to a isolated Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on legal proceedings as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya juggles revenge with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a father flies to a funeral with his teenage son, and ponders how much to disclose about his family's background.

Pain is accumulated upon trauma as wounded survivors seem fated to encounter each other repeatedly for all time

Interconnected Stories

Links abound. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to escape 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. Supporting characters from one narrative return in homes, bars or judicial venues in another.

These storylines may sound tangled, but the author understands how to drive a narrative – his previous successful Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been translated into numerous languages. His businesslike prose sparkles 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 reach the island is change my name".

Character Portrayal and Narrative Power

Characters are portrayed in brief, impactful lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes ring with sad power or insightful humour: a boy is punched by his father after urinating at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade jabs over cups of watery tea.

The author's knack of bringing you fully into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an previous story a authentic frisson, for the first few times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times nearly comic: trauma is accumulated upon trauma, coincidence on coincidence in a grim farce in which damaged survivors seem fated to bump into each other again and again for forever.

Thematic Complexity and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds less like life and closer to uncertainty, that is aspect of the author's point. These hurt people are burdened by the crimes they have suffered, trapped in cycles of thought and behavior that stir and spiral and may in turn hurt others. The author has spoken about the effect of his personal experiences of harm and he depicts with compassion the way his characters traverse this perilous landscape, striving for treatments – seclusion, icy sea dips, forgiveness or bracing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" structure isn't extremely educational, while the quick pace means the discussion of sexual politics or online networks is primarily shallow. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a thoroughly accessible, victim-focused saga: a appreciated response to the typical fixation on detectives and offenders. The author shows how pain can affect lives and generations, and how time and care can silence its aftereffects.