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Young Freya stays with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she encounters 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than being aware of a secret," they tell her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the days that ensue, they will rape her, then bury her alive, a mix of nervousness and annoyance darting across their faces as they eventually liberate her from her temporary coffin.

This might have stood as the shocking main event of a novel, but it's merely a single of many awful events in The Elements, which collects four novelettes – issued separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront historical pain and try to find peace in the present moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's release has been marred by the inclusion of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the candidate list for a prominent LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other nominees withdrew in protest at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Conversation of gender identity issues is missing from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of significant issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the impact of mainstream and online outlets, family disregard and sexual violence are all explored.

Multiple Stories of Suffering

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow relocates to a remote Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on court case as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya juggles revenge with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a father flies to a memorial service with his young son, and considers how much to reveal about his family's past.

Trauma is layered with suffering as damaged survivors seem doomed to meet each other continuously for all time

Interconnected Stories

Links abound. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to leave 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. Secondary characters from one narrative return in cottages, taverns or courtrooms in another.

These narrative elements may sound complex, but the author understands how to power a narrative – his previous popular Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been rendered into many languages. His direct prose bristles with gripping hooks: "in the end, 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 modify my name".

Personality Development and Narrative Power

Characters are sketched in concise, effective lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes echo with melancholy power or insightful humour: a boy is punched by his father after having an accident at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange insults over cups of diluted tea.

The author's talent of transporting you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an previous story a genuine thrill, for the first few times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times almost comic: pain is piled on suffering, chance on accident in a dark farce in which wounded survivors seem fated to meet each other continuously for eternity.

Thematic Depth and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds different from life and closer to purgatory, that is element of the author's point. These hurt people are oppressed by the crimes they have endured, caught in routines of thought and behavior that agitate and descend and may in turn damage others. The author has discussed about the effect of his own experiences of mistreatment and he describes with understanding the way his cast traverse this perilous landscape, striving for treatments – isolation, cold ocean swims, reconciliation or bracing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "basic" framing isn't extremely informative, while the brisk pace means the discussion of gender dynamics or digital platforms is mainly superficial. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a entirely accessible, survivor-centered epic: a welcome response to the common fixation on investigators and perpetrators. The author illustrates how pain can run through lives and generations, and how years and tenderness can soften its aftereffects.