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Twelve-year-old Freya stays with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she encounters 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than being aware of a secret," they advise her, "is having one of your own." In the time that come after, they sexually assault her, then inter her while living, a mix of nervousness and annoyance passing across their faces as they ultimately liberate her from her makeshift coffin.

This may have functioned as the shocking centrepiece of a novel, but it's just one of multiple terrible events in The Elements, which gathers four short novels – released separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront previous suffering and try to achieve peace in the current moment.

Disputed Context and Subject Exploration

The book's issuance has been marred by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the longlist for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other nominees dropped out in dissent at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Discussion of trans rights is missing from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. Homophobia, the effect of conventional and digital platforms, family disregard and sexual violence are all investigated.

Distinct Accounts of Suffering

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow transfers to a isolated Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on trial as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya balances vengeance with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a parent travels to a burial with his young son, and considers how much to reveal about his family's background.

Trauma is accumulated upon trauma as damaged survivors seem fated to meet each other repeatedly for forever

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Links proliferate. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's panel contains the Freya who shows up again in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one narrative return in homes, taverns or legal settings in another.

These plot threads may sound complex, but the author knows how to propel a narrative – his prior successful Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been translated into dozens languages. His businesslike prose sparkles with gripping hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to play with fire"; "the primary step I do when I reach the island is modify my name".

Personality Portrayal and Narrative Power

Characters are sketched in concise, powerful lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes ring with tragic power or observational humour: a boy is hit by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade barbs over cups of weak tea.

The author's knack of transporting you completely into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a real excitement, for the opening times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is numbing, and at times almost comic: trauma is accumulated upon trauma, coincidence on chance in a bleak farce in which hurt survivors seem destined to meet each other again and again for all time.

Conceptual Complexity and Final Evaluation

If this sounds less like life and closer to limbo, that is part of the author's thesis. These hurt people are burdened by the crimes they have endured, caught in cycles of thought and behavior that agitate and descend and may in turn damage others. The author has discussed about the effect of his personal experiences of abuse and he depicts with understanding the way his characters navigate this risky landscape, extending for treatments – isolation, frigid water immersion, forgiveness or invigorating honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "elemental" framing isn't extremely informative, while the rapid pace means the examination of social issues or social media is mostly shallow. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a entirely accessible, trauma-oriented chronicle: a valued riposte to the common obsession on detectives and offenders. The author shows how suffering can affect lives and generations, and how duration and care can quieten its echoes.