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Twelve-year-old Freya stays with her distracted mother in Cornwall when she comes across 14-year-old 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 violate her, then entomb her breathing, combination of unease and annoyance darting across their faces as they ultimately free her from her temporary coffin.

This could have served as the shocking centrepiece of a novel, but it's only one of numerous awful events in The Elements, which collects four novelettes – issued individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront historical pain and try to achieve peace in the present moment.

Disputed Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's publication has been clouded by the addition of Earth, the second novella, on the longlist for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other candidates dropped out in protest at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Discussion of LGBTQ+ matters is missing from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of big issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the influence of conventional and digital platforms, caregiver abandonment and abuse are all explored.

Multiple Stories of Suffering

• 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 soccer player on legal proceedings as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya manages vengeance with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a dad travels to a burial with his young son, and wonders how much to divulge about his family's background.

Suffering is piled on pain as hurt survivors seem fated to meet each other continuously for forever

Related Accounts

Links abound. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who shows up again in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one story return in cottages, bars or courtrooms in another.

These storylines may sound complicated, but the author is skilled at how to propel a narrative – his prior successful Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been translated into many languages. His straightforward prose shines with suspenseful hooks: "in the end, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to play with fire"; "the first thing I do when I arrive on the island is modify my name".

Character Development and Storytelling Power

Characters are drawn in succinct, powerful lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes ring with sad power or insightful humour: a boy is punched by his father after having an accident at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade jabs over cups of diluted tea.

The author's knack of carrying you completely into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a genuine excitement, for the initial several times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is numbing, and at times practically comic: trauma is piled on pain, coincidence on chance in a bleak farce in which wounded survivors seem doomed to meet each other continuously for forever.

Thematic Depth and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds not exactly life and more like uncertainty, that is element of the author's thesis. These damaged people are weighed down by the crimes they have suffered, trapped in patterns of thought and behavior that agitate and spiral and may in turn harm others. The author has talked about the effect of his own experiences of abuse and he describes with sympathy the way his cast traverse this risky landscape, striving for remedies – seclusion, icy sea dips, reconciliation or refreshing honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "basic" structure isn't terribly educational, while the quick pace means the examination of sexual politics or digital platforms is primarily shallow. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a completely accessible, survivor-centered chronicle: a welcome rebuttal to the common preoccupation on investigators and offenders. The author illustrates how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how years and tenderness can silence its aftereffects.