The Elements (2025) is the publication in one volume of Irish writer John Boyne’s quartet of novellas which explore child sexual abuse. Each of the novellas focuses on a different perspective within the larger crime.

Fire is the 3rd of novellas & focuses on the perpetrator who is Dr Freya Petrus, a respected burn surgeon.

Freya grew up in the kinship care of her grandmother. Each summer she would spend a month with her mother and it was during one of these holidays that, as a 12-year-old, she was repeatedly raped by 14-year-old twin brothers.

Freya as an adult has been raping 14 year old boys. When she finally decides to stop she wonders how many boy’s lives she has ruined.