🔗 Share this article

Young Freya is visiting her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she comes across teenage twins. "Nothing better than being aware of a secret," they inform her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the weeks that come after, they will rape her, then entomb her breathing, a mix of nervousness and irritation flitting across their faces as they finally liberate her from her improvised coffin.

This may have functioned as the disturbing centrepiece of a novel, but it's only one of multiple awful events in The Elements, which assembles four novellas – issued individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront previous suffering and try to discover peace in the contemporary moment.

Debated Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's release has been marred by the addition of Earth, the second novella, on the candidate list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other candidates withdrew in dissent at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Discussion of gender identity issues is not present from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of big issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the impact of conventional and digital platforms, parental neglect and assault are all explored.

Distinct Accounts of Trauma

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow relocates to a secluded Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on court case as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya balances revenge with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a dad travels to a burial with his teenage son, and wonders how much to disclose about his family's history.

Pain is accumulated upon pain as damaged survivors seem destined to bump into each other repeatedly for forever

Related Accounts

Connections proliferate. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to leave the island of Water. His trial's panel contains the Freya who shows up again in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one narrative reappear in houses, taverns or courtrooms in another.

These storylines may sound complex, but the author is skilled at how to propel a narrative – his prior successful Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been rendered into dozens languages. His businesslike prose bristles with gripping hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to experiment with fire"; "the initial action I do when I reach the island is modify my name".

Character Development and Narrative Strength

Characters are drawn in concise, powerful lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes ring with sad power or perceptive humour: a boy is struck by his father after having an accident at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap barbs over cups of diluted tea.

The author's knack of bringing you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a real excitement, for the initial several times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is numbing, and at times nearly comic: trauma is accumulated upon pain, chance on chance in a dark farce in which hurt survivors seem destined to bump into each other again and again for eternity.

Thematic Complexity and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds less like life and more like limbo, that is aspect of the author's thesis. These wounded people are burdened by the crimes they have endured, stuck in patterns of thought and behavior that agitate and spiral and may in turn hurt others. The author has spoken about the impact of his own experiences of mistreatment and he portrays with sympathy the way his cast negotiate this risky landscape, striving for solutions – isolation, frigid water immersion, forgiveness or refreshing honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "basic" structure isn't particularly informative, while the rapid pace means the exploration of social issues or social media is mainly superficial. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a completely engaging, trauma-oriented saga: a welcome response to the typical fixation on investigators and criminals. The author shows how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how time and compassion can soften its reverberations.