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Young Freya stays with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she meets 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they inform her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the weeks that come after, they will rape her, then inter her while living, blend of unease and annoyance darting across their faces as they ultimately free her from her temporary coffin.

This could have served as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's merely a single of numerous horrific events in The Elements, which gathers four novellas – issued distinctly between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront historical pain and try to discover peace in the contemporary moment.

Disputed Context and Subject Exploration

The book's issuance has been overshadowed by the inclusion of Earth, the second novella, on the candidate list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other nominees pulled out in protest at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been called off.

Conversation of LGBTQ+ matters is not present from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of big issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the influence of conventional and digital platforms, caregiver abandonment and sexual violence are all investigated.

Multiple Narratives of Trauma

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow moves to a isolated Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on legal proceedings as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya balances revenge with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a father flies to a funeral with his teenage son, and wonders how much to reveal about his family's past.

Pain is piled on pain as wounded survivors seem fated to encounter each other continuously for all time

Interconnected Narratives

Links abound. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to leave the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one story reappear in cottages, bars or legal settings in another.

These storylines may sound tangled, but the author knows how to power a narrative – his prior successful Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been rendered into numerous languages. His straightforward prose sparkles with thriller-ish hooks: "in the end, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to play with fire"; "the initial action I do when I come to the island is change my name".

Personality Portrayal and Storytelling Strength

Characters are drawn in concise, impactful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes echo with sad power or observational humour: a boy is struck by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap jabs over cups of diluted tea.

The author's knack of bringing you completely into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an prior story a real frisson, for the opening times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is numbing, and at times nearly comic: trauma is piled on pain, accident on coincidence in a bleak farce in which wounded survivors seem doomed to bump into each other continuously for eternity.

Thematic Depth and Final Evaluation

If this sounds not exactly life and more like purgatory, that is aspect of the author's thesis. These wounded people are burdened by the crimes they have suffered, caught in routines of thought and behavior that stir and spiral and may in turn hurt others. The author has spoken about the impact of his own experiences of abuse and he portrays with sympathy the way his cast negotiate this risky landscape, reaching out for remedies – seclusion, cold ocean swims, resolution or bracing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" concept isn't terribly informative, while the quick pace means the exploration of social issues or social media is mostly superficial. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a entirely readable, survivor-centered epic: a appreciated rebuttal to the usual obsession on authorities and offenders. The author demonstrates how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how duration and tenderness can soften its reverberations.