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Twelve-year-old Freya is visiting her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she meets teenage twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they inform her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the days that follow, they violate her, then entomb her breathing, combination of anxiety and frustration flitting across their faces as they eventually free her from her temporary coffin.

This could have served as the shocking main event of a novel, but it's just one of many horrific events in The Elements, which collects four novelettes – published distinctly between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront previous suffering and try to achieve peace in the contemporary moment.

Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration

The book's release has been marred by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the longlist for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other candidates pulled out in protest at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Conversation of gender identity issues is absent from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of big issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the impact of conventional and digital platforms, family disregard and assault are all explored.

Multiple Accounts of Suffering

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow moves to a isolated Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on legal proceedings as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya balances revenge with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a dad journeys to a memorial service with his adolescent son, and considers how much to divulge about his family's past.

Suffering is layered with suffering as damaged survivors seem doomed to meet each other continuously for all time

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Connections proliferate. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who shows up again in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Supporting characters from one account return in cottages, taverns or courtrooms in another.

These narrative elements may sound complex, but the author knows how to propel a narrative – his prior popular Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been translated into many languages. His direct prose shines with gripping hooks: "in the end, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to play with fire"; "the first thing I do when I come to the island is change my name".

Personality Development and Narrative Power

Characters are drawn in brief, powerful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes resonate with melancholy power or perceptive humour: a boy is struck by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade insults over cups of diluted tea.

The author's ability of bringing you fully into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an previous story a authentic frisson, for the opening times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is numbing, and at times almost comic: pain is accumulated upon trauma, chance on chance in a dark farce in which wounded survivors seem destined to encounter each other continuously for forever.

Conceptual Complexity and Final Evaluation

If this sounds not exactly life and more like uncertainty, that is element of the author's point. These hurt people are oppressed by the crimes they have suffered, stuck in routines of thought and behavior that churn and descend and may in turn damage others. The author has talked about the impact of his own experiences of abuse and he portrays with compassion the way his ensemble negotiate this perilous landscape, reaching out for treatments – solitude, cold ocean swims, resolution or refreshing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "elemental" structure isn't particularly informative, while the brisk pace means the examination of gender dynamics or digital platforms is primarily surface-level. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a completely accessible, victim-focused saga: a valued riposte to the typical fixation on detectives and perpetrators. The author shows how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how years and tenderness can quieten its aftereffects.