The Elements Exploration: Interconnected Stories of Pain
Twelve-year-old Freya is visiting her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she meets teenage twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they advise her, "is having one of your own." In the weeks that ensue, they will rape her, then inter her while living, blend of anxiety and annoyance darting across their faces as they eventually release her from her makeshift coffin.
This could have served as the disturbing centrepiece of a novel, but it's just one of many terrible events in The Elements, which gathers four short novels – released individually between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront historical pain and try to achieve peace in the contemporary moment.
Disputed Context and Subject Exploration
The book's release has been clouded by the addition of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a notable 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 trans rights is not present from The Elements, although the author explores plenty of significant issues. Homophobia, the effect of conventional and digital platforms, parental neglect and sexual violence are all explored.
Four Stories of Pain
- In Water, a mourning woman named Willow transfers to a isolated Irish island after her husband is jailed for awful crimes.
- In Earth, Evan is a footballer on trial as an accessory to rape.
- In Fire, the adult Freya balances vengeance with her work as a surgeon.
- In Air, a parent journeys to a burial with his young son, and considers how much to divulge about his family's past.
Pain is layered with trauma as wounded survivors seem doomed to meet each other again and again for eternity
Interconnected Accounts
Relationships proliferate. We first meet 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, partners with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Supporting characters from one account reappear in cottages, pubs or courtrooms in another.
These storylines may sound tangled, but the author knows how to drive a narrative – his earlier acclaimed Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been rendered into numerous languages. His businesslike prose sparkles with suspenseful 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 alter my name".
Personality Development and Narrative Strength
Characters are drawn in concise, impactful lines: the empathetic Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes ring with tragic power or perceptive humour: a boy is hit by his father after having an accident at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour exchange barbs over cups of weak tea.
The author's talent of carrying you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the reappearance of a character or plot strand from an previous story a real frisson, for the initial several times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is numbing, and at times practically comic: pain is accumulated upon pain, chance on chance in a dark farce in which hurt survivors seem destined to encounter each other again and again for forever.
Conceptual Complexity and Concluding Evaluation
If this sounds different from life and resembling limbo, that is part of the author's thesis. These damaged people are weighed down by the crimes they have endured, caught in patterns of thought and behavior that stir and plunge and may in turn damage others. The author has talked about the effect of his own experiences of harm and he describes with sympathy the way his cast navigate this dangerous landscape, extending for treatments – seclusion, icy sea dips, resolution or bracing honesty – that might let light in.
The book's "fundamental" concept isn't terribly instructive, while the quick pace means the discussion of sexual politics or social media is primarily superficial. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a completely accessible, victim-focused chronicle: a welcome riposte to the usual obsession on detectives and criminals. The author illustrates how pain can affect lives and generations, and how time and tenderness can silence its reverberations.
