John Boyne's Latest Review: Linked Stories of Pain

Twelve-year-old Freya spends time with her preoccupied mother in Cornwall when she encounters teenage twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they advise her, "is having one of your own." In the time that come after, they violate her, then inter her while living, blend of anxiety and annoyance flitting across their faces as they ultimately liberate her from her improvised coffin.

This might have stood as the jarring centrepiece of a novel, but it's only one of many horrific events in The Elements, which assembles four novellas – issued separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate previous suffering and try to find peace in the current moment.

Disputed Context and Subject Exploration

The book's issuance has been clouded by the presence of Earth, the subsequent novella, on the preliminary list for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, nearly all other contenders pulled out in dissent at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been terminated.

Discussion of LGBTQ+ matters is absent from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of major issues. Homophobia, the effect of traditional and social media, family disregard and abuse are all explored.

Four Accounts of Suffering

• In Water, a mourning woman named Willow relocates to a remote Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for terrible crimes.
• In Earth, Evan is a athlete on legal proceedings as an accomplice to rape.
• In Fire, the adult Freya manages vengeance with her work as a medical professional.
• In Air, a dad journeys to a memorial service with his young son, and wonders how much to reveal about his family's history.

Trauma is layered with trauma as hurt survivors seem fated to bump into each other repeatedly for eternity

Related Stories

Connections proliferate. We originally see Evan as a boy trying to flee the island of Water. His trial's jury contains the Freya who reappears in Fire. Aaron, the father from Air, collaborates with Freya and has a child with Willow's daughter. Supporting characters from one narrative reappear in cottages, taverns or legal settings in another.

These storylines may sound tangled, but the author is skilled at how to power a narrative – his previous acclaimed Holocaust drama has sold many copies, and he has been translated into dozens languages. His direct prose sparkles with suspenseful hooks: "in the end, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to experiment with fire"; "the primary step I do when I arrive on the island is modify my name".

Personality Portrayal and Storytelling Power

Characters are drawn in brief, impactful lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes resonate with melancholy power or perceptive humour: a boy is punched by his father after urinating at a football match; a prejudiced island mother and her Dublin-raised neighbour trade insults over cups of weak tea.

The author's ability of transporting you completely into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a real frisson, for the first few times at least. Yet the cumulative effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times nearly comic: trauma is layered with trauma, chance on coincidence in a bleak farce in which wounded survivors seem fated to bump into each other repeatedly for all time.

Conceptual Complexity and Final Evaluation

If this sounds less like life and resembling limbo, that is aspect of the author's thesis. These damaged people are weighed down by the crimes they have experienced, stuck in routines of thought and behavior that stir and descend and may in turn damage others. The author has discussed about the influence of his own experiences of mistreatment and he portrays with compassion the way his characters traverse this dangerous landscape, reaching out for solutions – isolation, icy sea dips, resolution or refreshing honesty – that might bring illumination.

The book's "basic" structure isn't extremely informative, while the quick pace means the discussion of social issues or online networks is mostly superficial. But while The Elements is a imperfect work, it's also a thoroughly accessible, trauma-oriented chronicle: a valued riposte to the usual obsession on detectives and perpetrators. The author shows how trauma can affect lives and generations, and how years and compassion can soften its aftereffects.