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Young Freya stays with her distracted mother in Cornwall when she encounters teenage twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they advise her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the days that follow, they sexually assault her, then inter her while living, blend of anxiety and irritation passing across their faces as they finally release her from her makeshift coffin.

This could have served as the jarring centrepiece of a novel, but it's merely a single of many awful events in The Elements, which collects four short novels – released separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront previous suffering and try to discover peace in the current moment.

Debated Context and Subject Exploration

The book's release has been clouded by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the longlist for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other nominees dropped out in dissent at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Debate of LGBTQ+ matters is not present from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of major issues. Homophobia, the impact of mainstream and online outlets, parental neglect and abuse are all investigated.

Distinct Narratives of Trauma

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow relocates to a secluded Irish island after her husband is jailed for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on legal proceedings as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya manages retaliation with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a dad flies to a funeral with his adolescent son, and ponders how much to reveal about his family's background.

Suffering is piled on suffering as wounded survivors seem fated to meet each other again and again for forever

Interconnected Accounts

Connections multiply. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Supporting characters from one narrative reappear in cottages, bars or courtrooms in another.

These plot threads may sound complex, but the author understands how to power a narrative – his previous acclaimed Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been rendered into dozens languages. His straightforward prose sparkles with thriller-ish hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to experiment with fire"; "the initial action I do when I come to the island is alter my name".

Personality Development and Narrative Power

Characters are sketched in brief, impactful lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes ring with sad power or observational 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 weak tea.

The author's knack of transporting you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an prior story a authentic thrill, for the initial several times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is numbing, and at times practically comic: pain is accumulated upon pain, accident on chance in a grim farce in which wounded survivors seem destined to encounter each other repeatedly for all time.

Conceptual Complexity and Final Assessment

If this sounds not exactly life and more like limbo, that is part of the author's point. These damaged people are weighed down by the crimes they have endured, stuck in cycles of thought and behavior that stir and descend and may in turn harm others. The author has talked about the impact of his personal experiences of abuse and he describes with understanding the way his ensemble negotiate this risky landscape, striving for treatments – isolation, cold ocean swims, resolution or invigorating honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "elemental" structure isn't extremely informative, while the brisk pace means the discussion of sexual politics or online networks is mainly shallow. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a entirely readable, survivor-centered chronicle: a valued riposte to the typical obsession on detectives and offenders. The author demonstrates how suffering can affect lives and generations, and how years and compassion can silence its reverberations.