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Young Freya stays with her distracted mother in Cornwall when she meets 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they tell her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the time that come after, they sexually assault her, then bury her alive, blend of anxiety and frustration passing across their faces as they ultimately liberate her from her temporary coffin.

This could have served as the shocking main event of a novel, but it's merely a single of many terrible events in The Elements, which assembles four novellas – released individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront past trauma and try to discover peace in the current moment.

Debated Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's publication has been marred by the inclusion of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the candidate list for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other candidates dropped out in protest at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Discussion of trans rights is not present from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of major issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the effect of conventional and digital platforms, caregiver abandonment and abuse are all explored.

Four Accounts of Pain

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow moves to a remote Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on trial as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya juggles retaliation with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a dad travels to a burial with his adolescent son, and wonders how much to reveal about his family's past.

Trauma is accumulated upon trauma as wounded survivors seem destined to meet each other continuously for all time

Interconnected Accounts

Links proliferate. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's panel contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one story resurface in homes, taverns or courtrooms in another.

These plot threads may sound complex, but the author understands how to power a narrative – his earlier popular Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been translated into numerous languages. His straightforward prose shines with gripping hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to play with fire"; "the initial action I do when I reach the island is alter my name".

Personality Portrayal and Narrative Strength

Characters are portrayed in succinct, impactful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes ring with melancholy power or observational humour: a boy is punched by his father after urinating at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap barbs over cups of watery tea.

The author's knack of bringing you completely into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an previous story a genuine excitement, for the initial several times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times practically comic: pain is piled on pain, coincidence on coincidence in a dark farce in which damaged survivors seem doomed to meet each other again and again for all time.

Conceptual Complexity and Final Evaluation

If this sounds different from life and more like uncertainty, that is element of the author's thesis. These damaged people are burdened by the crimes they have suffered, stuck in routines of thought and behavior that stir and descend and may in turn damage others. The author has spoken about the impact of his individual experiences of mistreatment and he portrays with understanding the way his cast traverse this dangerous landscape, extending for treatments – isolation, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or refreshing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "basic" framing isn't extremely instructive, while the quick pace means the discussion of sexual politics or digital platforms is mostly surface-level. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a completely readable, trauma-oriented saga: a welcome rebuttal to the typical obsession on investigators and criminals. The author demonstrates how trauma can permeate lives and generations, and how duration and compassion can soften its aftereffects.