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Twelve-year-old Freya spends time with her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she encounters 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than knowing a secret," they advise her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the time that follow, they violate her, then entomb her breathing, a mix of nervousness and frustration passing across their faces as they finally free her from her improvised coffin.

This might have stood as the disturbing centrepiece of a novel, but it's only one of many terrible events in The Elements, which gathers four novelettes – released individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront past trauma and try to achieve peace in the contemporary moment.

Debated Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's publication has been overshadowed by the addition of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the candidate list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other candidates pulled out in dissent at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Discussion of LGBTQ+ matters is absent from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. Homophobia, the impact of conventional and digital platforms, caregiver abandonment and assault are all examined.

Four Stories of Pain

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow transfers to a secluded Irish island after her husband is jailed for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on legal proceedings as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya manages revenge with her work as a doctor.
• In Air, a dad journeys to a burial with his adolescent son, and ponders how much to disclose about his family's past.

Suffering is piled on pain as damaged survivors seem fated to meet each other repeatedly for all time

Related Accounts

Links proliferate. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who reappears in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one account return in cottages, bars or legal settings in another.

These storylines may sound tangled, but the author knows how to power a narrative – his previous successful Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been converted into many languages. His businesslike prose sparkles with thriller-ish hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should be wiser than to experiment with fire"; "the initial action I do when I arrive on the island is change my name".

Character Portrayal and Storytelling Power

Characters are drawn in succinct, effective lines: the compassionate 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 urinating at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange insults over cups of weak tea.

The author's talent of carrying you completely into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an prior story a authentic frisson, for the first few times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times almost comic: pain is accumulated upon pain, coincidence on coincidence in a dark farce in which hurt survivors seem destined to bump into each other repeatedly for all time.

Conceptual Depth and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds different from life and closer to uncertainty, that is part of the author's point. These wounded people are oppressed by the crimes they have experienced, caught 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 abuse and he describes with compassion the way his cast negotiate this perilous landscape, extending for remedies – solitude, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or bracing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "elemental" concept isn't particularly educational, while the rapid pace means the examination of social issues or digital platforms is mostly superficial. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a entirely engaging, survivor-centered saga: a welcome rebuttal to the common preoccupation on detectives and perpetrators. The author shows how pain can permeate lives and generations, and how years and compassion can quieten its aftereffects.