John Boyne's Latest Exploration: Interconnected Stories of Trauma
Young Freya spends time with her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she comes across 14-year-old twins. "Nothing better than knowing a secret," they inform her, "is having one of your own." In the days that ensue, they violate her, then bury her alive, combination of unease and irritation flitting across their faces as they ultimately liberate her from her makeshift coffin.
This might have stood as the jarring focal point of a novel, but it's just one of many awful events in The Elements, which gathers four novelettes – issued distinctly between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters confront past trauma and try to discover peace in the current moment.
Controversial Context and Subject Exploration
The book's publication has been overshadowed by the addition of Earth, the second novella, on the longlist for a notable LGBTQ+ writing prize. In August, most other candidates dropped out in dissent at the author's gender-critical views – and this year's prize has now been called off.
Conversation of trans rights is missing from The Elements, although the author touches on plenty of big issues. Homophobia, the effect of mainstream and online outlets, caregiver abandonment and assault are all explored.
Distinct Stories of Pain
- In Water, a grieving woman named Willow transfers to a secluded Irish island after her husband is imprisoned for terrible crimes.
- In Earth, Evan is a soccer player on trial as an accomplice to rape.
- In Fire, the adult Freya balances retaliation with her work as a doctor.
- In Air, a dad journeys to a memorial service with his teenage son, and considers how much to reveal about his family's history.
Suffering is accumulated upon trauma as hurt survivors seem destined to bump into each other again and again for forever
Related Accounts
Links proliferate. We originally see 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. Minor characters from one story return in cottages, pubs or legal settings in another.
These storylines may sound complex, but the author understands how to propel a narrative – his prior successful Holocaust drama has sold numerous units, and he has been rendered into dozens languages. His direct prose bristles with thriller-ish hooks: "after all, a doctor in the burns unit should understand more than to experiment with fire"; "the initial action I do when I come to the island is change my name".
Personality Development and Storytelling Power
Characters are portrayed in concise, impactful lines: the caring Nigerian priest, the troubled pub landlord, the daughter at war with her mother. Some scenes echo with sad power or insightful 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 insults over cups of watery tea.
The author's talent of carrying you wholeheartedly into each narrative gives the comeback of a character or plot strand from an earlier story a real thrill, for the initial several times at least. Yet the collective effect of it all is desensitizing, and at times almost comic: pain is layered with trauma, coincidence on accident in a grim farce in which hurt survivors seem destined to meet each other again and again for eternity.
Conceptual Complexity and Final Evaluation
If this sounds different from life and more like purgatory, that is aspect of the author's message. These hurt people are oppressed by the crimes they have endured, stuck in cycles of thought and behavior that agitate and descend and may in turn damage others. The author has spoken about the impact of his own experiences of abuse and he depicts with compassion the way his cast negotiate this dangerous landscape, extending for treatments – solitude, frigid water immersion, forgiveness or refreshing honesty – that might let light in.
The book's "elemental" framing isn't extremely informative, while the rapid pace means the discussion of gender dynamics or digital platforms is mostly surface-level. But while The Elements is a defective work, it's also a completely readable, survivor-centered chronicle: a valued rebuttal to the usual preoccupation on detectives and criminals. The author shows how trauma can affect lives and generations, and how time and compassion can silence its reverberations.
