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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 being aware of a secret," they inform her, "is having one of your own." In the time that ensue, they will rape her, then inter her while living, combination of unease and annoyance passing across their faces as they ultimately liberate her from her improvised coffin.

This could have served as the disturbing centrepiece of a novel, but it's merely a single of multiple terrible events in The Elements, which collects four novellas – issued separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront previous suffering and try to find peace in the current moment.

Disputed Context and Subject Exploration

The book's release has been overshadowed by the presence of Earth, the second novella, on the candidate list for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other contenders pulled out in objection at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Discussion of gender identity issues is missing from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of big issues. Homophobia, the effect of traditional and social media, caregiver abandonment and sexual violence are all examined.

Four Stories of Pain

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow relocates to a isolated Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on trial as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya balances vengeance with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a parent travels to a burial with his adolescent son, and ponders how much to disclose about his family's background.

Trauma is piled on pain as damaged survivors seem doomed to bump into each other again and again for eternity

Interconnected Narratives

Connections abound. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who reappears in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one account return in cottages, taverns or judicial venues in another.

These narrative elements may sound tangled, but the author understands how to propel a narrative – his previous successful Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been converted into dozens languages. His direct prose shines with suspenseful hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to toy with fire"; "the initial action I do when I come to the island is modify my name".

Personality Development and Narrative Strength

Characters are portrayed in succinct, powerful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes resonate with sad power or insightful 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 exchange jabs over cups of diluted tea.

The author's ability of carrying you completely into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an previous story a real thrill, for the first few times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times practically comic: pain is layered with trauma, accident on chance in a grim farce in which wounded survivors seem fated to encounter each other repeatedly for all time.

Thematic Complexity and Final Evaluation

If this sounds not exactly life and more like limbo, that is part of the author's thesis. These wounded people are burdened by the crimes they have endured, caught in cycles of thought and behavior that churn and spiral and may in turn harm others. The author has discussed about the impact of his individual experiences of harm and he describes with understanding the way his characters negotiate this dangerous landscape, striving for remedies – solitude, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or bracing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" structure isn't terribly instructive, while the quick pace means the examination of social issues or online networks is primarily superficial. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a thoroughly readable, trauma-oriented saga: a appreciated rebuttal to the usual fixation on investigators and perpetrators. The author illustrates how pain can affect lives and generations, and how duration and care can soften its aftereffects.