Four novellas about damaged people weighed down by the crimes they have suffered draw you efficiently in, but the cumulative effect is numbing
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welve-year-old Freya is visiting her self-absorbed mother in Cornwall when she meets the 14-year-old twins. “The only thing better than knowing a secret,” they tell her, “is having one of your own.” In the weeks that follow, they will rape her, then bury her alive, a mix of anxiety and annoyance flitting across their faces as they eventually release her from her makeshift coffin.
This might have stood as the shocking centrepiece of a novel, but it’s just one of many terrible events in The Elements, which collects four novellas – published separately between 2023 and 2025 – in which characters negotiate past trauma and try to find peace in the present.
The book’s publication has been overshadowed by the inclusion of Earth, the second novella, on the longlist for the Polari prize for LGBTQ+ writing. In August, most other nominees dropped out in protest at Boyne’s gender-critical views – and this year’s prize has now been cancelled.
