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Young Freya spends time with her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she encounters teenage twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they advise her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the time that follow, they will rape her, then entomb her breathing, combination of unease and frustration darting across their faces as they ultimately release her from her makeshift coffin.

This could have served as the disturbing centrepiece of a novel, but it's only one of numerous awful events in The Elements, which assembles four novellas – issued separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront past trauma and try to find peace in the current moment.

Disputed Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's publication has been clouded by the presence of Earth, the second novella, on the candidate list for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other contenders dropped out in objection at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been called off.

Discussion of trans rights is missing from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of major issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the impact of conventional and digital platforms, caregiver abandonment and sexual violence are all examined.

Four Accounts of Trauma

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow moves to a remote Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on trial as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya juggles retaliation with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a father flies to a funeral with his adolescent son, and considers how much to reveal about his family's past.

Suffering is accumulated upon pain as damaged survivors seem doomed to encounter each other again and again for eternity

Related Narratives

Links abound. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's jury 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 story resurface in cottages, pubs or legal settings in another.

These storylines may sound complex, but the author is skilled at how to power a narrative – his earlier popular Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been converted into many languages. His straightforward prose shines with suspenseful hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to play with fire"; "the first thing I do when I reach the island is alter my name".

Personality Development and Narrative Power

Characters are sketched in succinct, effective lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes echo with sad power or observational humour: a boy is hit by his father after urinating at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade barbs over cups of diluted tea.

The author's talent of bringing you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an previous story a genuine excitement, for the first few times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is numbing, and at times nearly comic: trauma is layered with suffering, coincidence on accident in a bleak farce in which hurt survivors seem fated to bump into each other repeatedly for all time.

Conceptual Complexity and Final Evaluation

If this sounds different from life and closer to uncertainty, that is element of the author's message. These hurt people are burdened by the crimes they have endured, caught in routines of thought and behavior that agitate and spiral and may in turn hurt others. The author has spoken about the impact of his individual experiences of abuse and he describes with understanding the way his characters navigate this perilous landscape, reaching out for solutions – solitude, cold ocean swims, reconciliation or invigorating honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "fundamental" concept isn't terribly informative, while the rapid pace means the discussion of social issues or digital platforms is mostly surface-level. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a completely readable, trauma-oriented saga: a welcome response to the usual obsession on detectives and perpetrators. The author illustrates how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how time and compassion can soften its reverberations.