🔗 Share this article The Elements Analysis: Linked Stories of Trauma Young Freya spends time with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she meets teenage twins. "The only thing better than knowing a secret," they inform her, "comes from possessing one of your own." In the weeks that ensue, they violate her, then bury her alive, blend of nervousness and frustration passing across their faces as they ultimately liberate her from her makeshift coffin. This might have stood as the jarring main event of a novel, but it's just one of many awful events in The Elements, which gathers four short novels – published separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters navigate historical pain and try to achieve peace in the current moment. Controversial Context and Thematic Exploration The book's issuance has been clouded by the addition of Earth, the second novella, on the preliminary list for a prominent LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other candidates pulled out in dissent at the author's controversial views – and this year's prize has now been terminated. Discussion of LGBTQ+ matters is not present from The Elements, although the author addresses plenty of significant issues. Anti-gay prejudice, the influence of traditional and social media, caregiver abandonment and assault are all examined. Multiple Stories of Suffering In Water, a sorrowful woman named Willow relocates to a remote Irish island after her husband is jailed for horrific crimes. In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on trial as an accomplice to rape. In Fire, the adult Freya manages vengeance with her work as a surgeon. In Air, a dad travels to a funeral with his young son, and wonders how much to reveal about his family's past. Pain is piled on pain as damaged survivors seem doomed to meet each other continuously for all time Linked Narratives Relationships proliferate. We first meet Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's group contains the Freya who returns in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, collaborates with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Secondary characters from one narrative return in houses, taverns or judicial venues in another. These storylines may sound complex, but the author understands how to propel a narrative – his prior popular Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been converted into many languages. His straightforward prose shines with suspenseful hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should know better than to play with fire"; "the primary step I do when I arrive on the island is modify my name". Personality Portrayal and Narrative Strength Characters are drawn in succinct, effective lines: the compassionate Nigerian priest, the disturbed pub landlord, the daughter at struggle with her mother. Some scenes resonate with melancholy power or perceptive humour: a boy is struck by his father after wetting himself at a football match; a narrow-minded island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange barbs over cups of diluted tea. The author's knack of bringing you completely into each narrative gives the return of a character or plot strand from an previous story a authentic excitement, for the first few times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times nearly comic: suffering is layered with suffering, accident on chance in a bleak farce in which damaged survivors seem fated to meet each other again and again for all time. Thematic Depth and Concluding Assessment If this sounds not exactly life and more like uncertainty, that is element of the author's message. These damaged people are oppressed by the crimes they have experienced, trapped in routines of thought and behavior that stir and descend and may in turn harm others. The author has discussed about the influence of his own experiences of harm and he portrays with understanding the way his cast negotiate this dangerous landscape, striving for solutions – isolation, icy sea dips, reconciliation or refreshing honesty – that might let light in. The book's "fundamental" structure isn't extremely instructive, while the rapid pace means the discussion of gender dynamics or digital platforms is mainly superficial. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a entirely accessible, trauma-oriented chronicle: a appreciated rebuttal to the usual fixation on investigators and perpetrators. The author shows how trauma can permeate lives and generations, and how duration and compassion can silence its aftereffects.