Books: The elements

Boyne John, 2025. The Elements. HB: Doubleday 978-0857528872. 512. 20.00. ![Graphic][1]</img> John Boyne is best known for his young people’s novel The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas . I next came across him when my brother recommended his satire The Echo Chamber , a dark parody of modern lives dominated and distorted by social media. Boyne is highly readable, and I went on to discover his true hinterland, which is writing about people who have been deeply damaged by abuse. In the last couple of years he has published four short but interlinked novels, Water , Earth , Fire , and Air , each exactly 176 pages long. Characters in these four books appear, crossover, and … [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif