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Twelve-year-old Freya stays with her distracted mother in Cornwall when she comes across teenage twins. "The only thing better than knowing a secret," they advise her, "is having one of your own." In the days that come after, they violate her, then entomb her breathing, combination of nervousness and irritation flitting across their faces as they finally free her from her makeshift coffin.

This could have served as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's only one of numerous terrible 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.

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

The book's issuance has been overshadowed by the inclusion of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other contenders pulled out in dissent at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled.

Discussion of gender identity issues is missing from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of major issues. LGBTQ+ discrimination, the effect of mainstream and online outlets, parental neglect and assault are all explored.

Four Accounts of Suffering

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow relocates to a remote Irish island after her husband is incarcerated for awful crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a footballer on court case as an accessory to rape.
• In Fire, the grown-up Freya manages retaliation with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a parent travels to a burial with his adolescent son, and ponders how much to divulge about his family's history.

Pain is piled on suffering as hurt survivors seem fated to encounter each other repeatedly for eternity

Interconnected Stories

Relationships multiply. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who reappears in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one account reappear in houses, bars or judicial venues in another.

These narrative elements may sound complex, but the author knows how to power a narrative – his previous popular Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been rendered into numerous languages. His direct prose bristles with suspenseful hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to play with fire"; "the primary step I do when I come to the island is change my name".

Character Portrayal and Storytelling Strength

Characters are drawn in brief, impactful lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at conflict with her mother. Some scenes echo with tragic power or insightful humour: a boy is punched by his father after having an accident at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap jabs over cups of diluted tea.

The author's knack of bringing you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a genuine frisson, for the first few times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times nearly comic: suffering is layered with pain, accident on chance in a grim farce in which wounded survivors seem fated to meet each other again and again for all time.

Thematic Complexity and Concluding Assessment

If this sounds not exactly life and resembling purgatory, that is part of the author's point. These damaged people are oppressed by the crimes they have experienced, trapped in cycles of thought and behavior that agitate and descend and may in turn hurt others. The author has talked about the effect of his own experiences of mistreatment and he depicts with compassion the way his ensemble navigate this risky landscape, reaching out for remedies – seclusion, frigid water immersion, forgiveness or invigorating honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" concept isn't particularly instructive, while the quick pace means the examination of sexual politics or social media is mostly superficial. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a thoroughly accessible, survivor-centered epic: a welcome response to the common preoccupation on authorities and offenders. The author demonstrates how pain can run through lives and generations, and how years and tenderness can soften its reverberations.