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Young Freya is visiting her distracted mother in Cornwall when she comes across 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they inform her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the days that ensue, they sexually assault her, then entomb her breathing, blend of anxiety and annoyance flitting across their faces as they finally free her from her makeshift coffin.

This may have functioned as the shocking main event of a novel, but it's just one of many horrific events in The Elements, which collects four short novels – released separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront past trauma and try to find peace in the current moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's release has been clouded by the inclusion of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other candidates dropped out in objection at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been called off.

Debate of trans rights is absent from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the influence of mainstream and online outlets, family disregard and abuse are all examined.

Multiple Stories of Trauma

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow moves to a isolated Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on court case as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya manages revenge with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a parent travels to a memorial service with his young son, and ponders how much to reveal about his family's history.

Trauma is piled on suffering as damaged survivors seem doomed to meet each other continuously for forever

Interconnected Accounts

Relationships abound. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to leave the island of Water. His trial's panel 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 resurface in houses, bars or judicial venues in another.

These narrative elements may sound complicated, but the author understands how to power a narrative – his earlier popular Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been converted into many languages. His direct prose sparkles with thriller-ish hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to toy with fire"; "the initial action I do when I reach the island is alter my name".

Personality Development and Storytelling Strength

Characters are portrayed in brief, effective lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes ring with sad power or perceptive humour: a boy is struck by his father after having an accident at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap jabs over cups of weak tea.

The author's talent of carrying you completely into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an previous story a real frisson, for the first few times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is numbing, and at times nearly comic: suffering is piled on pain, chance on accident in a bleak farce in which wounded survivors seem doomed to encounter each other continuously for forever.

Conceptual Depth and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds not exactly life and more like purgatory, that is aspect of the author's message. These wounded people are burdened by the crimes they have experienced, caught in cycles of thought and behavior that stir and descend and may in turn damage others. The author has discussed about the influence of his own experiences of mistreatment and he describes with sympathy the way his ensemble negotiate this risky landscape, striving for treatments – seclusion, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or invigorating honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "basic" concept isn't extremely instructive, while the brisk pace means the exploration of gender dynamics or online networks is primarily surface-level. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a completely readable, victim-focused saga: a appreciated rebuttal to the typical obsession on detectives and offenders. The author illustrates how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how time and compassion can quieten its echoes.