🔗 Share this article The Elements Analysis: Interconnected Tales of Trauma Young Freya is visiting her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she meets teenage twins. "Nothing better than being aware of a secret," they inform her, "is having one of your own." In the weeks that follow, they sexually assault her, then inter her while living, a mix of unease and irritation passing across their faces as they ultimately release her from her makeshift coffin. This might have stood as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's just one of numerous awful events in The Elements, which gathers four short novels – published individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront past trauma and try to discover peace in the contemporary moment. Controversial Context and Subject Exploration The book's publication has been clouded by the addition of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the longlist for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other nominees dropped out in dissent at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been called off. Conversation of trans rights is missing from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the impact of traditional and social media, caregiver abandonment and sexual violence are all explored. Distinct Stories of Suffering In Water, a mourning woman named Willow relocates to a remote Irish island after her husband is jailed for awful crimes. In Earth, Evan is a footballer on court case as an participant to rape. In Fire, the adult Freya balances retaliation with her work as a medical professional. In Air, a dad travels to a memorial service with his teenage son, and wonders how much to divulge about his family's background. Suffering is accumulated upon suffering as damaged survivors seem doomed to bump into each other continuously for all time Related Stories Relationships multiply. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to leave 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. Secondary characters from one account resurface in houses, pubs or legal settings in another. These storylines may sound complex, but the author knows how to propel a narrative – his prior acclaimed Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been converted into dozens languages. His businesslike prose bristles with suspenseful hooks: "in the end, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to experiment with fire"; "the initial action I do when I come to the island is change my name". Personality Development and Storytelling Power Characters are portrayed in succinct, powerful lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes echo with tragic 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 barbs over cups of weak tea. The author's talent of carrying you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an prior story a authentic thrill, for the initial several times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is dulling, and at times practically comic: pain is accumulated upon pain, chance on coincidence in a bleak farce in which damaged survivors seem destined to encounter each other continuously for forever. Thematic Depth and Concluding Evaluation If this sounds less like life and closer to limbo, that is element of the author's point. These hurt people are weighed down by the crimes they have experienced, stuck in routines of thought and behavior that churn and plunge and may in turn harm others. The author has talked about the impact of his individual experiences of mistreatment and he portrays with sympathy the way his cast negotiate this perilous landscape, reaching out for remedies – seclusion, icy sea dips, resolution or refreshing honesty – that might let light in. The book's "basic" framing isn't extremely informative, while the quick pace means the discussion of gender dynamics or online networks is mainly surface-level. But while The Elements is a flawed work, it's also a completely readable, victim-focused chronicle: a valued rebuttal to the common preoccupation on investigators and criminals. The author shows how suffering can permeate lives and generations, and how duration and compassion can silence its echoes.