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Twelve-year-old Freya is visiting her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she encounters 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they tell her, "is having one of your own." In the weeks that follow, they sexually assault her, then entomb her breathing, combination of unease and irritation passing across their faces as they finally free her from her makeshift coffin.

This may have functioned as the jarring focal point of a novel, but it's only one of multiple awful events in The Elements, which gathers four novellas – published separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate past trauma and try to discover peace in the current moment.

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

The book's publication has been marred by the addition of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other nominees pulled out in dissent at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Debate of LGBTQ+ matters is absent from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of significant issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the effect of traditional and social media, caregiver abandonment and abuse are all examined.

Multiple Stories of Pain

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow relocates to a remote Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on court case as an participant to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya juggles retaliation with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a dad flies to a memorial service with his young son, and considers how much to reveal about his family's background.

Suffering is piled on pain as hurt survivors seem doomed to encounter each other repeatedly for forever

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Relationships abound. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, collaborates with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one narrative return in cottages, pubs or courtrooms in another.

These narrative elements may sound complicated, but the author knows how to power a narrative – his previous popular Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been rendered into dozens languages. His straightforward prose bristles with suspenseful hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to toy with fire"; "the primary step I do when I reach the island is alter my name".

Personality Portrayal and Narrative Strength

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

The author's ability of bringing you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a real thrill, for the first few times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is dulling, and at times nearly comic: suffering is layered with trauma, coincidence on coincidence in a dark farce in which wounded survivors seem destined to meet each other again and again for all time.

Thematic Depth and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds less like life and more like limbo, that is aspect of the author's point. These damaged people are burdened by the crimes they have experienced, trapped in cycles of thought and behavior that agitate and spiral and may in turn harm others. The author has spoken about the effect of his personal experiences of abuse and he depicts with sympathy the way his cast navigate this risky landscape, striving for treatments – solitude, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or refreshing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "fundamental" concept isn't particularly informative, while the quick pace means the examination of social issues or digital platforms is mostly shallow. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a entirely readable, trauma-oriented chronicle: a appreciated rebuttal to the common fixation on detectives and perpetrators. The author demonstrates how trauma can affect lives and generations, and how years and tenderness can silence its reverberations.