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Young Freya is visiting her distracted mother in Cornwall when she comes across teenage twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they tell her, "is having one of your own." In the time that ensue, they violate her, then entomb her breathing, blend of anxiety and frustration darting across their faces as they ultimately free her from her makeshift coffin.

This could have served as the disturbing focal point of a novel, but it's merely a single of many terrible events in The Elements, which assembles four novelettes – issued individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate previous suffering and try to find peace in the present moment.

Debated Context and Subject Exploration

The book's publication has been clouded by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the longlist for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other candidates pulled out in dissent at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Debate of trans rights is absent from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of big issues. Homophobia, the impact of conventional and digital platforms, parental neglect and sexual violence are all explored.

Distinct Stories of Suffering

• In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow moves to a isolated 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 adult Freya juggles vengeance with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a dad journeys to a memorial service with his teenage son, and ponders how much to reveal about his family's background.

Suffering is layered with pain as wounded survivors seem fated to meet each other continuously for all time

Interconnected Narratives

Links multiply. We originally see 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 storylines may sound tangled, but the author knows how to drive a narrative – his prior popular Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been translated into dozens languages. His direct prose shines with suspenseful hooks: "ultimately, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to toy with fire"; "the first thing I do when I arrive on the island is change my name".

Character Portrayal and Storytelling Power

Characters are sketched in succinct, effective lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes resonate with melancholy power or insightful humour: a boy is struck by his father after having an accident at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade jabs over cups of watery tea.

The author's knack of bringing you fully into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a genuine thrill, for the opening times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is numbing, and at times nearly comic: suffering is layered with suffering, accident on accident in a bleak farce in which hurt survivors seem fated to encounter each other repeatedly for forever.

Conceptual Depth and Concluding Evaluation

If this sounds not exactly life and resembling limbo, that is part of the author's thesis. These hurt people are burdened by the crimes they have endured, caught in routines of thought and behavior that agitate and spiral and may in turn damage others. The author has discussed about the influence of his own experiences of abuse and he describes with sympathy the way his characters traverse this perilous landscape, striving for solutions – seclusion, cold ocean swims, resolution or refreshing honesty – that might provide clarity.

The book's "elemental" structure isn't extremely instructive, while the brisk pace means the examination of social issues or social media is mainly superficial. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a entirely engaging, trauma-oriented chronicle: a valued rebuttal to the typical preoccupation on investigators and perpetrators. The author shows how suffering can permeate lives and generations, and how years and tenderness can silence its reverberations.