🔗 Share this article

Twelve-year-old Freya spends time with her preoccupied 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 weeks that follow, they sexually assault her, then bury her alive, combination of unease and annoyance passing across their faces as they ultimately liberate her from her temporary coffin.

This may have functioned as the disturbing centrepiece of a novel, but it's merely a single of many awful events in The Elements, which assembles four novelettes – issued distinctly between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront past trauma and try to discover peace in the contemporary moment.

Disputed Context and Subject Exploration

The book's publication has been clouded by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other nominees pulled out in protest at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been called off.

Discussion of LGBTQ+ matters is absent from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of major issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the effect of conventional and digital platforms, family disregard and abuse are all explored.

Distinct Narratives of Trauma

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow relocates to a isolated Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on trial as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya juggles revenge with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a father journeys to a burial with his adolescent son, and considers how much to divulge about his family's history.

Pain is accumulated upon suffering as hurt survivors seem destined to meet each other repeatedly for all time

Interconnected Accounts

Connections abound. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to leave the island of Water. His trial's panel contains the Freya who reappears in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one narrative return in homes, taverns or courtrooms in another.

These narrative elements may sound complicated, but the author knows how to power a narrative – his previous successful Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been translated into numerous languages. His straightforward prose bristles with thriller-ish hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to play with fire"; "the first thing I do when I arrive on the island is change my name".

Personality Development and Storytelling Power

Characters are portrayed in succinct, impactful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes echo with melancholy power or observational 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 barbs over cups of diluted tea.

The author's ability of transporting you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an prior story a genuine thrill, for the initial several times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times almost comic: pain is layered with trauma, accident on accident in a bleak farce in which hurt survivors seem destined to bump into each other again and again for eternity.

Conceptual Depth and Final Assessment

If this sounds not exactly life and closer to limbo, that is element of the author's point. These damaged people are burdened by the crimes they have endured, caught in routines of thought and behavior that stir and descend and may in turn harm others. The author has talked about the impact of his individual experiences of abuse and he depicts with understanding the way his ensemble navigate this perilous landscape, striving for solutions – seclusion, icy sea dips, forgiveness or invigorating honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" structure isn't terribly instructive, while the rapid pace means the exploration of gender dynamics or social media is mainly shallow. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a entirely accessible, trauma-oriented epic: a welcome riposte to the typical obsession on detectives and offenders. The author demonstrates how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how duration and tenderness can soften its echoes.