🔗 Share this article A New Collection Exploration: Interwoven Narratives of Suffering Young Freya is visiting her distracted mother in Cornwall when she comes across 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than knowing a secret," they advise her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the weeks that come after, they violate her, then inter her while living, a mix of anxiety and frustration passing across their faces as they ultimately free her from her makeshift coffin. This may have functioned as the disturbing centrepiece of a novel, but it's just one of numerous awful events in The Elements, which gathers four novelettes – published separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront past trauma and try to find peace in the present moment. Disputed Context and Subject Exploration The book's issuance has been overshadowed by the addition of Earth, the second novella, on the candidate list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, the majority other candidates dropped out in protest at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been terminated. Debate of trans rights is missing from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. Homophobia, the influence of conventional and digital platforms, parental neglect and sexual violence are all examined. Distinct Narratives of Pain In Water, a grieving woman named Willow relocates to a remote Irish island after her husband is jailed for horrific crimes. In Earth, Evan is a athlete on legal proceedings as an accessory to rape. In Fire, the mature Freya manages revenge with her work as a surgeon. In Air, a parent travels to a burial with his young son, and wonders how much to disclose about his family's history. Trauma is layered with trauma as hurt survivors seem destined to encounter each other again and again for all time Related Stories Links proliferate. We initially encounter Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who reappears in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, works with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Minor characters from one account return in cottages, taverns or legal settings in another. These storylines may sound complex, but the author knows how to drive a narrative – his prior popular Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been rendered into dozens languages. His direct prose shines with gripping hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to experiment with fire"; "the initial action I do when I reach the island is modify my name". Character Development and Narrative Strength Characters are sketched in concise, powerful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes resonate with melancholy power or observational humour: a boy is struck by his father after having an accident at a football match; a biased island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade insults over cups of weak tea. The author's knack of bringing you fully into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an prior story a authentic thrill, for the opening times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is dulling, and at times almost comic: pain is accumulated upon pain, coincidence on accident in a bleak farce in which damaged survivors seem destined to bump into each other repeatedly for all time. Thematic Complexity and Final Evaluation If this sounds less like life and more like purgatory, that is element of the author's thesis. These wounded people are weighed down by the crimes they have experienced, trapped in cycles of thought and behavior that stir and plunge and may in turn harm others. The author has spoken about the effect of his individual experiences of abuse and he describes with sympathy the way his ensemble traverse this perilous landscape, extending for solutions – seclusion, cold ocean swims, reconciliation or bracing honesty – that might provide clarity. The book's "fundamental" framing isn't extremely informative, while the rapid pace means the discussion 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 saga: a welcome riposte to the usual preoccupation on detectives and offenders. The author shows how pain can affect lives and generations, and how time and care can quieten its echoes.