Book Review: Elements

Elements by Solomon Deep
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The idea of Elements intrigued me. Although fiction revolving around a journey to find oneself is certainly nothing new, Alan’s evolving from self-absorbed juvenile to world-battered optimist combines the qualities of introspection with life experiences in a very satisfying way. From the beginning when he dumps his girlfriend and just starts driving to the end when he has to pull himself back to reality in order to clean up his mother’s mess it is abundantly clear what is going on in his head and he processes it with his writing throughout. So while Alan is not exactly your knight-in-shining-armor sort of hero, he does sum up the irritation of adolescence and the discovery that the world does not revolve around you.

While the idea intrigued me and I loved the depth and diversity of the characters there were a few things that were a constant annoyance throughout. While seemingly trivial, I could not get used to the use of the metric measurements in the book. I realize this is an alternate reality sort of scene, but given that the US has never embraced the metric system, it jolted me out of the story every time. The other was the author’s prologue, where he felt the need to explain the reason it was ok to write his own prologue and not monumentally cocky, which of course made it come off as monumentally cocky. Which is too bad, because as I am the same age as the post-9/11 millennials who so inspired Alan with the their listless angst, and I enjoyed understanding his process in bringing the character to life, except that he had to explain that it was ok for him to explain that, which of course is a bit of a turn-off. In any case, for any angsty brat who has ever had to go on a self-reflecting journey in order to embrace love and reality - as many of us have had to do - this book and its characters will resonate, probably in a relatively embarrassing way.


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