The Elements by John Boyne - Reading Ireland Month 2026

In this very dark novel by Irish writer John Boyne, four novellas are connected through the trauma that each character experienced; some are victims and some have turned around to inflict their pain on others. Each segment is named after an element. 

In the first story, Water, Vanessa Carlin has fled to an isolated island off the coast of Ireland, determined to be anonymous – she uses her middle and maiden names, Willow Hale, and shaves her head to distance herself from the perfectly coiffed wife she used to be in Dublin. It takes time to learn exactly what drove her to the island but it’s pretty obvious that her husband is imprisoned for something bad:

I allow my mind to drift to my ex-husband for a moment. Well, he’s surrounded by chaos now, I tell myself, wondering whether I should smile at the irony but unable to. Although he’s technically not my ex-husband at all yet. I just think of him that way. One day, I will summon the energy to speak to a solicitor, but right now I have had enough of the legal system to last me a lifetime, and, who knows, maybe he’ll die or be killed, which would save me both the bother and the expense.

Harsh, although it turns out he deserves her loathing. The question - for her and for the reader - is whether she was complicit in her husband’s wrongdoing or completely unaware of his behavior. There was one major clue, which she ignored, although, admittedly, it could be hard to suspect the unthinkable. Water plays an important part in Vanessa’s story, along with her passivity. She met her husband when she signed up for swimming lessons at her local pool; eventually, he became the head of a national swimming organization. He discouraged her from swimming with friends at Dún Laoghaire, a suburban coastal town near Dublin that had been popular since Victorian times. He also resented that she had experience with other men before him and brought it up from time to time. No, Vanessa doesn’t miss Brendan, but she is worried about her daughter Rebecca, who blames both parents for everything that has happened.

My friend Mary liked the way Boyne unspools the story, doling out facts and feelings to the reader slowly, and moving back and forth from present to past. Each successive story features a character who did not always seem important previously. I can’t describe the Earth, Fire, or Air sections without spoiling the narrative but they are all very different and all are emotional (and disturbing) in different ways. The Earth story is very disturbing and hard to read but so compelling I could not stop reading. Each section is told in the first person which adds to the emotional impact. I knew we weren’t heading toward a happy ending necessarily but I was hopeful the intersecting characters were not doomed to unrelieved misery. I think the author’s message is that even essentially good people may turn into abusers if they are trauma victims, and may not be able to escape from a cycle of abuse without self-knowledge and resilience.

This book was selected for a book group I’m in that includes lawyers who clerked for the same judge. We started meeting online every month during the pandemic to stay in touch with him and greatly enjoyed our sessions until, sadly, he died last spring. We’re trying to keep it going without him by meeting quarterly, and his eldest daughter picked this book. I am also sharing this with Reading Ireland Month, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books.

Title: The Elements
Author: John Boyne
Publication: Henry Holt & Co.
Genre: Fiction
Source: Library