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Twelve-year-old Freya stays with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she comes across teenage twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they tell her, "is having one of your own." In the days that come after, they will rape her, then entomb her breathing, combination of unease and frustration darting across their faces as they finally liberate her from her makeshift coffin.

This could have served as the jarring focal point of a novel, but it's only one of many terrible events in The Elements, which collects four novellas – published individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate historical pain and try to find peace in the present moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's issuance has been clouded by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a notable 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.

Conversation of LGBTQ+ matters is absent from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of big issues. Homophobia, the effect of traditional and social media, parental neglect and abuse are all examined.

Four Narratives of Trauma

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow transfers to a isolated Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on legal proceedings as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya manages revenge with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a dad journeys to a burial with his teenage son, and wonders how much to reveal about his family's past.

Trauma is layered with trauma as hurt survivors seem doomed to meet each other again and again for all time

Interconnected Accounts

Relationships proliferate. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who shows up again in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, collaborates with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Supporting characters from one account return in cottages, bars or courtrooms in another.

These narrative elements may sound complicated, but the author understands how to propel a narrative – his prior acclaimed Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been translated into many languages. His direct prose bristles with suspenseful hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to experiment with fire"; "the initial action I do when I arrive on the island is alter my name".

Character Portrayal and Storytelling Power

Characters are portrayed in brief, powerful lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes echo with melancholy power or perceptive humour: a boy is struck by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade insults over cups of diluted tea.

The author's knack of bringing you fully into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an prior story a real thrill, for the initial several times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is dulling, and at times almost comic: suffering is layered with suffering, coincidence on accident in a dark farce in which hurt survivors seem fated to bump into each other repeatedly for all time.

Conceptual Complexity and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds different from life and closer to limbo, that is element of the author's message. These wounded people are burdened by the crimes they have suffered, trapped in routines of thought and behavior that agitate and spiral and may in turn harm others. The author has discussed about the effect of his own experiences of harm and he describes with sympathy the way his cast traverse this perilous landscape, reaching out for remedies – seclusion, frigid water immersion, resolution or invigorating honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "elemental" concept isn't particularly instructive, while the quick pace means the examination of sexual politics or online networks is mainly surface-level. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a thoroughly engaging, survivor-centered chronicle: a appreciated riposte to the usual obsession on investigators and perpetrators. The author shows how suffering can run through lives and generations, and how time and compassion can silence its echoes.