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Twelve-year-old Freya spends time with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she meets 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than knowing a secret," they tell her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the days that ensue, they sexually assault her, then bury her alive, blend of anxiety and frustration passing across their faces as they eventually release her from her temporary coffin.

This could have served as the shocking centrepiece of a novel, but it's merely a single of many terrible events in The Elements, which gathers four novelettes – released distinctly between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront historical pain and try to find peace in the contemporary moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's issuance has been marred by the inclusion of Earth, the second novella, on the longlist for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other candidates pulled out in protest at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been called off.

Conversation of gender identity issues is missing from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of major issues. Homophobia, the influence of conventional and digital platforms, caregiver abandonment and abuse are all explored.

Four Narratives of Suffering

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow transfers to a remote Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on legal proceedings as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya manages revenge with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a dad journeys to a memorial service with his adolescent son, and ponders how much to reveal about his family's history.

Suffering is layered with pain as wounded survivors seem destined to encounter each other again and again for eternity

Interconnected Accounts

Relationships abound. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's panel 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 resurface in homes, pubs or legal settings in another.

These narrative elements may sound tangled, but the author knows how to power a narrative – his previous popular Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been rendered into numerous languages. His direct prose shines with thriller-ish hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to play with fire"; "the first thing I do when I arrive on the island is alter my name".

Character Portrayal and Storytelling Strength

Characters are drawn in succinct, effective lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes ring with sad power or perceptive humour: a boy is hit by his father after having an accident at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap barbs over cups of watery tea.

The author's ability of transporting you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an prior story a genuine frisson, for the opening times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is dulling, and at times practically comic: pain is accumulated upon trauma, chance on accident in a grim farce in which damaged survivors seem destined to encounter each other continuously for all time.

Conceptual Complexity and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds not exactly life and closer to limbo, that is aspect of the author's thesis. These wounded people are weighed down by the crimes they have endured, caught in routines of thought and behavior that agitate and descend and may in turn harm others. The author has talked about the impact of his own experiences of harm and he describes with understanding the way his cast navigate this perilous landscape, striving for treatments – isolation, icy sea dips, forgiveness or invigorating honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" framing isn't particularly instructive, while the quick pace means the exploration of gender dynamics or online networks is mostly superficial. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a entirely engaging, trauma-oriented chronicle: a appreciated response to the common fixation on investigators and criminals. The author illustrates how pain can affect lives and generations, and how duration and care can silence its echoes.