A New Collection Exploration: Interwoven Stories of Pain

Twelve-year-old Freya stays with her distracted mother in Cornwall when she meets teenage twins. "The only thing better than knowing a secret," they advise her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the days that follow, they sexually assault her, then bury her alive, blend of anxiety and frustration flitting across their faces as they eventually free her from her makeshift coffin.

This may have functioned as the jarring focal point of a novel, but it's merely a single of multiple terrible events in The Elements, which assembles four novellas – issued individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront previous suffering and try to find peace in the contemporary moment.

Controversial Context and Subject Exploration

The book's issuance has been clouded by the presence of Earth, the second novella, on the longlist for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other contenders dropped out in objection at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Debate of gender identity issues is absent from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of significant issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the influence of traditional and social media, caregiver abandonment and assault are all explored.

Four Accounts of Suffering

• In Water, a grieving woman named Willow relocates to a secluded Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for horrific crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on trial as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the mature Freya juggles retaliation with her work as a surgeon.
• In Air, a father journeys to a memorial service with his adolescent son, and considers how much to divulge about his family's past.

Suffering is layered with trauma as hurt survivors seem destined to encounter each other repeatedly for eternity

Interconnected Stories

Links multiply. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to leave the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one account return in homes, pubs or legal settings in another.

These narrative elements may sound tangled, but the author understands how to propel a narrative – his earlier successful Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been translated into numerous languages. His direct prose shines with thriller-ish hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to experiment with fire"; "the initial action I do when I reach the island is modify my name".

Character Portrayal and Storytelling Power

Characters are portrayed in concise, effective lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes resonate with sad power or observational humour: a boy is punched by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade jabs over cups of weak tea.

The author's ability of bringing you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a real excitement, for the opening times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is dulling, and at times almost comic: pain is piled on pain, coincidence on accident in a bleak farce in which wounded survivors seem fated to meet each other repeatedly for forever.

Conceptual Depth and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds less like life and resembling uncertainty, that is aspect of the author's message. These hurt people are weighed down by the crimes they have experienced, stuck in routines of thought and behavior that churn and spiral and may in turn damage others. The author has talked about the influence of his personal experiences of abuse and he portrays with sympathy the way his cast negotiate this dangerous landscape, extending for remedies – solitude, icy sea dips, forgiveness or refreshing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "elemental" framing isn't particularly educational, while the brisk pace means the exploration of gender dynamics or digital platforms is mostly shallow. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a completely accessible, trauma-oriented chronicle: a appreciated riposte to the common obsession on detectives and perpetrators. The author shows how pain can affect lives and generations, and how years and compassion can quieten its echoes.