🔗 Share this article

Young Freya spends time with her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she meets 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they advise her, "is having one of your own." In the weeks that ensue, they sexually assault her, then inter her while living, blend of unease and irritation darting across their faces as they eventually release her from her improvised coffin.

This might have stood as the jarring focal point of a novel, but it's only one of many awful events in The Elements, which gathers four short novels – issued separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate previous suffering and try to find peace in the contemporary moment.

Debated Context and Thematic Exploration

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

Discussion of gender identity issues is not present from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the influence of mainstream and online outlets, caregiver abandonment and assault are all investigated.

Multiple Stories of Pain

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow moves to a remote Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on court case as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya balances retaliation with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a father flies to a memorial service with his adolescent son, and wonders how much to reveal about his family's background.

Suffering is piled on pain as wounded survivors seem destined to encounter each other again and again for forever

Related Narratives

Links abound. 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. Minor characters from one story reappear in cottages, bars or legal settings in another.

These narrative elements may sound complicated, but the author understands how to drive a narrative – his earlier popular Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been rendered into dozens languages. His direct prose sparkles with suspenseful hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to toy with fire"; "the first thing I do when I reach the island is modify my name".

Personality Portrayal and Narrative Strength

Characters are drawn in concise, impactful lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes echo with sad power or observational humour: a boy is hit by his father after having an accident at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange insults over cups of weak tea.

The author's talent of transporting you fully into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an previous story a genuine thrill, for the first few times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is dulling, and at times almost comic: trauma is piled on pain, chance on coincidence in a grim farce in which wounded survivors seem destined to encounter each other continuously for all time.

Conceptual Depth and Final Evaluation

If this sounds less like life and more like limbo, that is element of the author's point. These wounded people are burdened by the crimes they have endured, trapped in routines of thought and behavior that agitate and plunge and may in turn harm others. The author has talked about the impact of his individual experiences of abuse and he depicts with sympathy the way his cast negotiate this dangerous landscape, striving for treatments – seclusion, cold ocean swims, resolution or invigorating honesty – that might let light in.

The book's "fundamental" framing isn't extremely instructive, while the rapid pace means the examination of sexual politics or social media is mainly superficial. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a thoroughly accessible, trauma-oriented epic: a valued riposte to the typical obsession on authorities and perpetrators. The author illustrates how trauma can run through lives and generations, and how years and compassion can silence its echoes.