The Elements Review: Linked Tales of Suffering

Twelve-year-old Freya spends time with her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she comes across 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than being aware of a secret," they advise her, "is having one of your own." In the weeks that follow, they violate her, then inter her while living, a mix of unease and frustration darting across their faces as they eventually release her from her makeshift coffin.

This may have functioned as the jarring centrepiece of a novel, but it's only one of many awful events in The Elements, which assembles four novellas – published separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate historical pain and try to achieve peace in the contemporary moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's publication has been clouded by the addition of Earth, the second novella, on the longlist for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other candidates withdrew in dissent at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Discussion of LGBTQ+ matters is missing from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of major issues. Homophobia, the effect of conventional and digital platforms, family disregard and assault are all investigated.

Four Stories of Pain

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow transfers to a isolated Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on legal proceedings as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya manages vengeance with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a parent flies to a funeral with his adolescent son, and considers how much to divulge about his family's past.

Trauma is layered with suffering as wounded survivors seem destined to bump into each other continuously for forever

Linked Accounts

Relationships multiply. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's panel contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one narrative resurface in cottages, pubs or courtrooms in another.

These narrative elements may sound complex, but the author is skilled at how to propel a narrative – his earlier popular Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been converted into many languages. His direct prose bristles with suspenseful hooks: "in the end, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to toy with fire"; "the primary step I do when I come to the island is alter my name".

Character Development and Narrative Power

Characters are drawn in brief, effective lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes resonate with tragic power or insightful humour: a boy is hit by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange barbs over cups of weak tea.

The author's ability of transporting you completely into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an previous story a authentic excitement, for the first few times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times nearly comic: pain is layered with suffering, accident on accident in a bleak farce in which damaged survivors seem doomed to encounter each other again and again for forever.

Thematic Depth and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds not exactly life and closer to purgatory, that is aspect of the author's message. These hurt people are weighed down by the crimes they have experienced, stuck in patterns of thought and behavior that stir and plunge and may in turn damage others. The author has spoken about the influence of his individual experiences of abuse and he portrays with understanding the way his ensemble negotiate this risky landscape, striving for remedies – seclusion, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or refreshing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "elemental" concept isn't terribly educational, while the brisk pace means the examination of sexual politics or social media is mainly surface-level. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a entirely accessible, trauma-oriented chronicle: a welcome response to the common fixation on investigators and offenders. The author demonstrates how trauma can affect lives and generations, and how time and tenderness can soften its reverberations.