🔗 Share this article

Young Freya is visiting her distracted mother in Cornwall when she comes across 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 ensue, they violate her, then bury her alive, combination of nervousness and irritation darting across their faces as they finally 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 multiple awful events in The Elements, which gathers four short novels – released distinctly between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate previous suffering and try to achieve peace in the current moment.

Disputed Context and Subject Exploration

The book's publication has been clouded by the addition of Earth, the second novella, on the preliminary list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other nominees dropped out in objection at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Discussion of LGBTQ+ matters is not present from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of big issues. Homophobia, the influence of conventional and digital platforms, parental neglect and abuse are all examined.

Multiple Narratives of Pain

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow moves to a isolated Irish island after her husband is jailed for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on court case as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya balances vengeance with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a parent journeys to a funeral with his teenage son, and considers how much to disclose about his family's background.

Suffering is accumulated upon pain as damaged survivors seem fated to meet each other again and again for forever

Related Narratives

Connections multiply. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's panel 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. Minor characters from one narrative return in cottages, pubs or courtrooms in another.

These storylines may sound complicated, but the author knows how to propel a narrative – his earlier acclaimed Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been rendered into numerous languages. His straightforward prose sparkles 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 come to the island is modify my name".

Personality Portrayal and Narrative Strength

Characters are drawn in concise, impactful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes echo with tragic power or insightful 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 diluted tea.

The author's ability of carrying you wholeheartedly 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 almost comic: trauma is accumulated upon trauma, chance on coincidence in a grim farce in which damaged survivors seem doomed to bump into each other repeatedly for eternity.

Conceptual Complexity and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds not exactly life and resembling limbo, that is element of the author's point. These wounded people are oppressed by the crimes they have suffered, caught in routines of thought and behavior that churn and plunge and may in turn damage others. The author has talked about the influence of his individual experiences of harm and he describes with sympathy the way his ensemble negotiate this risky landscape, reaching out for solutions – seclusion, frigid water immersion, forgiveness or bracing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "fundamental" framing isn't extremely educational, while the brisk pace means the discussion of sexual politics or online networks is mostly shallow. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a entirely engaging, victim-focused chronicle: a appreciated response to the typical preoccupation on detectives and offenders. The author shows how trauma can permeate lives and generations, and how time and compassion can silence its echoes.