by Labmom55 (York, PA): Once again, John Boyne has crafted a book that drew me in and kept me enthralled. It is a powerful book. In The Elements, four interconnected stories explore sexual crimes and the different parties involved – the enabler, the accomplice, the perpetrator and the victim. The main character of the first story is a wife who remained obtuse to her husband’s crime and has now run away in the aftermath of him being found guilty. Next, there’s the footballer who is on trial for supposedly filming his buddy’s rape of a young woman. Then a female doctor who rapes young boys because of a crime she was the victim of. And finally, a forty year old man who was once the victim of the doctor. The stories are all tangentially intertwined until the end, when everything comes full circle. The book presents a pebble in a pond aspect, watching the repercussions move outward. Boyne manages to present each character in a straightforward manner. It takes a special talent to write from the first person POV in some of these situations. I didn’t feel sympathetic to the first three, but I also didn’t look away. Each was nuanced and I felt I was given a clear eyed view of their thoughts. Overall, it’s a book that covers different aspects of culpability, guilt, identity, forgiveness (or not) and survival. As always, the writing is beautiful. This is a deeply thought provoking book. It’s a book I’ll be pondering for a while.
My thanks to Netgalley and Henry Holt for an advance copy of this book.
