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Young Freya spends time with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she meets 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they inform her, "is having one of your own." In the days that come after, they will rape her, then entomb her breathing, a mix of anxiety and irritation passing across their faces as they finally release her from her improvised coffin.

This could have served as the jarring centrepiece of a novel, but it's merely a single of multiple awful events in The Elements, which assembles four novelettes – released individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate previous suffering and try to find peace in the present moment.

Disputed Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's release has been overshadowed by the addition of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other nominees withdrew in protest at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been called off.

Conversation of gender identity issues is missing from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of significant issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the influence of mainstream and online outlets, family disregard and assault are all explored.

Distinct Accounts of Pain

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow relocates to a secluded Irish island after her husband is jailed for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on legal proceedings as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya juggles retaliation with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a father journeys to a burial with his young son, and ponders how much to disclose about his family's background.

Pain is piled on trauma as damaged survivors seem fated to encounter each other repeatedly for eternity

Linked Narratives

Links proliferate. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to leave 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 narrative resurface in cottages, pubs or judicial venues in another.

These storylines may sound tangled, but the author is skilled at how to power a narrative – his previous popular Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been converted into dozens languages. His direct prose sparkles with suspenseful hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to experiment with fire"; "the initial action I do when I come to the island is change my name".

Character Portrayal and Narrative Power

Characters are sketched in succinct, effective lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes echo with tragic power or insightful humour: a boy is hit by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade jabs over cups of watery tea.

The author's talent of bringing you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an previous story a authentic frisson, for the initial several times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times almost comic: trauma is piled on suffering, accident on chance in a grim farce in which wounded survivors seem doomed to bump into each other continuously for eternity.

Conceptual Complexity and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds not exactly life and resembling purgatory, that is part of the author's thesis. These damaged people are weighed down by the crimes they have suffered, caught in patterns of thought and behavior that stir and plunge and may in turn hurt others. The author has talked about the influence of his individual experiences of abuse and he describes with understanding the way his cast navigate this dangerous landscape, striving for solutions – isolation, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or bracing honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "fundamental" framing isn't particularly instructive, while the rapid pace means the exploration of social issues or social media is mainly shallow. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a completely accessible, trauma-oriented saga: a appreciated response to the common fixation on detectives and offenders. The author demonstrates how pain can run through lives and generations, and how duration and care can quieten its echoes.