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Young Freya spends time 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 time that ensue, they will rape her, then entomb her breathing, a mix of anxiety and annoyance flitting across their faces as they finally liberate her from her improvised coffin.

This may have functioned as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's only one of numerous horrific events in The Elements, which gathers four novellas – issued individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate historical pain and try to discover peace in the current moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's release has been marred by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the candidate list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other nominees dropped out in dissent at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Discussion of trans rights is missing from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of major issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the impact of traditional and social media, parental neglect and sexual violence are all explored.

Distinct Narratives of Pain

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow transfers to a remote Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on trial as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya balances revenge with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a parent flies to a burial with his young son, and considers how much to divulge about his family's past.

Trauma is layered with suffering as damaged survivors seem destined to bump into each other repeatedly for eternity

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Links multiply. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who shows up again in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Supporting characters from one narrative reappear in houses, bars or legal settings in another.

These storylines may sound tangled, but the author understands how to power a narrative – his earlier successful Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been rendered into dozens languages. His direct prose sparkles with suspenseful hooks: "in the end, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to experiment with fire"; "the first thing I do when I come to the island is modify my name".

Personality Portrayal and Narrative Power

Characters are drawn in brief, effective lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes ring with melancholy power or perceptive 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 swap barbs over cups of weak tea.

The author's knack of carrying you completely into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an previous story a authentic frisson, for the first few times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is numbing, and at times almost comic: suffering is layered with suffering, accident on coincidence in a grim farce in which hurt survivors seem doomed to bump into each other again and again for all time.

Conceptual Depth and Final Assessment

If this sounds not exactly life and more like purgatory, that is aspect of the author's point. These hurt people are oppressed by the crimes they have suffered, stuck in routines of thought and behavior that stir and descend and may in turn harm others. The author has discussed about the influence of his personal experiences of mistreatment and he describes with sympathy the way his cast traverse this risky landscape, extending for solutions – isolation, cold ocean swims, resolution or refreshing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" concept isn't particularly educational, while the quick pace means the examination of gender dynamics or online networks is primarily shallow. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a entirely readable, trauma-oriented saga: a welcome riposte to the usual obsession on detectives and perpetrators. The author shows how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how time and care can soften its echoes.