🔗 Share this article The Elements Review: Interconnected Narratives of Trauma Young Freya is visiting her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she comes across 14-year-old twins. "The only thing better than being aware of a secret," they tell her, "is having one of your own." In the days that come after, they violate her, then entomb her breathing, a mix of anxiety and annoyance 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 many horrific events in The Elements, which gathers four novelettes – issued separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate past trauma and try to find peace in the present moment. Debated Context and Subject Exploration The book's publication has been marred by the presence of Earth, the second novella, on the longlist for a significant LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other candidates dropped out in protest at the author's debated views – and this year's prize has now been cancelled. Debate of gender identity issues is not present from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of significant issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the effect of traditional and social media, caregiver abandonment and abuse are all investigated. Multiple Accounts of Suffering In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow moves to a remote Irish island after her husband is jailed for awful crimes. In Earth, Evan is a footballer on trial as an participant to rape. In Fire, the mature Freya manages revenge with her work as a surgeon. In Air, a parent flies to a funeral with his young son, and ponders how much to disclose about his family's background. Pain is accumulated upon trauma as damaged survivors seem destined to encounter each other repeatedly for eternity Linked Narratives Links proliferate. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to escape the island of Water. His trial's panel 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 return in homes, bars or judicial venues in another. These plot threads may sound tangled, but the author understands how to drive a narrative – his earlier successful Holocaust drama has sold millions, and he has been translated into dozens languages. His businesslike prose sparkles with gripping hooks: "after all, 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 change my name". Character Portrayal and Storytelling Strength Characters are drawn in brief, effective lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes ring with sad power or insightful humour: a boy is hit by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour swap barbs over cups of diluted tea. The author's talent of bringing you fully into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an prior story a real thrill, for the first few times at least. Yet the aggregate effect of it all is numbing, and at times nearly comic: pain is layered with suffering, chance on accident in a bleak farce in which wounded survivors seem fated to meet each other repeatedly for all time. Conceptual Depth and Concluding Assessment If this sounds less like life and resembling limbo, that is aspect of the author's point. These damaged people are oppressed by the crimes they have endured, trapped in cycles of thought and behavior that agitate and plunge and may in turn harm others. The author has discussed about the impact of his individual experiences of abuse and he describes with compassion the way his cast negotiate this dangerous landscape, extending for treatments – isolation, cold ocean swims, forgiveness or refreshing honesty – that might provide clarity. The book's "fundamental" framing isn't particularly informative, while the rapid pace means the exploration of sexual politics or social media is primarily superficial. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a completely engaging, victim-focused saga: a welcome response to the common preoccupation on authorities and offenders. The author shows how trauma can permeate lives and generations, and how duration and compassion can quieten its reverberations.