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Young Freya spends time with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she encounters teenage twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they advise her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the weeks that come after, they will rape her, then inter her while living, combination of nervousness and frustration darting across their faces as they ultimately liberate her from her improvised coffin.

This might have stood as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's merely a single of multiple awful events in The Elements, which assembles four novelettes – issued individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront past trauma and try to find peace in the contemporary moment.

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

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

Discussion of LGBTQ+ matters is absent from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of major issues. Homophobia, the impact of traditional and social media, family disregard and abuse are all investigated.

Four Stories of Trauma

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow moves to a secluded Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on legal proceedings as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya juggles vengeance with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a parent flies to a funeral with his young son, and ponders how much to disclose about his family's past.

Pain is accumulated upon pain as wounded survivors seem doomed to bump into each other again and again for all time

Interconnected Narratives

Connections proliferate. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to flee 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. Secondary characters from one story return in homes, pubs or judicial venues in another.

These plot threads may sound complex, but the author is skilled at how to power a narrative – his prior successful Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been rendered into numerous languages. His direct prose sparkles with thriller-ish hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to experiment with fire"; "the first thing I do when I reach the island is change my name".

Character Development and Storytelling Power

Characters are drawn in concise, effective lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at conflict 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 narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap jabs over cups of diluted tea.

The author's ability of transporting you completely into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a genuine frisson, for the opening times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times practically comic: suffering is piled on pain, chance on chance in a grim farce in which wounded survivors seem doomed to meet each other repeatedly for forever.

Thematic Complexity and Final Evaluation

If this sounds different from life and closer to uncertainty, that is aspect of the author's message. These wounded people are burdened by the crimes they have experienced, stuck in patterns of thought and behavior that agitate and spiral and may in turn harm others. The author has spoken about the effect of his individual experiences of harm and he depicts with compassion the way his cast navigate this perilous landscape, extending for treatments – solitude, cold ocean swims, reconciliation or invigorating honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" concept isn't particularly educational, while the brisk pace means the examination of gender dynamics or online networks is primarily surface-level. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a entirely readable, trauma-oriented epic: a appreciated rebuttal to the usual fixation on detectives and criminals. The author shows how pain can permeate lives and generations, and how duration and care can silence its echoes.