Third Class Relics: A Novel

by Elizabeth Genovise

Forty-one-year-old Abra, the narrator of Third Class Relics, gathers with her brother and cousins for an uncomfortable dinner the night after her father’s wake. No one speaks of the one missing family member—Jeffrey, the youngest cousin—nor of his doppelganger, Rupert, whose name Abra’s father cried out just before his death. When the evening comes to a close, Abra finds herself prowling her family’s history against her will. As she journeys through their darkest chapters, she is forced to confront the complex role Jeffrey/Rupert played in both healing and destroying them all, as well as the significance of her relationship with her cousin Andrei, who has spent twenty years blaming himself for the family’s defining tragedy. Third Class Relics recalls many Biblical myths, stories in which one person must perish so that those around him might be awakened to their inner darkness but also to their capacity for redemption.

360 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2024

About the author

Elizabeth Genovise grew up in Villa Park, Illinois. She graduated from the MFA program at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and considers her time in the Deep South to be the best of her life. Since then she has published three collections of short stories via small presses- A Different Harbor, Where There Are Two or More, and Posing Nude for the Saints- in addition to a chapbook, The Stone Pear. Her fourth book, Palindrome, is due out from the Texas Review Press in 2022.


Elizabeth is a 2016 O. Henry Prize recipient and her stories have appeared in The Cimarron Review, Natural Bridge, Pembroke Magazine, Appalachian Heritage, and dozens of other literary journals. She teaches college composition and literature, and also works as a private creative writing coach for aspiring authors. She and her husband Chris live near Knoxville, Tennessee in a home that is half writer's studio, half woodworking shop (where's the dining room???). Someday, she'd like to live in a lighthouse on Lake Michigan, and she is currently at work on a novel set in on those shores.

Reviews

[Amy Willoughby-Burle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Elizabeth Genovise’s Third Class Relics with tears in my eyes all the way through. This book is so masterfully crafted that it is impossible not to feel the message that pounds like a heavy heartbeat in each line. This novel is a call to action, and that action is love. If only we could love others for who they are and not who we selfishly need them to be . . . It is imperative that we start now. I cry just thinking about this book. If you get the chance to love someone, even in the smallest, most seemingly unimportant moment, DO! It might make all the difference in the world to them. Read this book!

[Ruth Garcia-Corrales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Third Class Relics, by Elizabeth Genovise, The story is told from Abra’s perspective on a get together with her brother and cousins on the day her father past. Her story is about their childhood and living in a family with parents self-absorbed to their worlds, which did not include their children. The darkest days are not only their daily situation but when the youngest cousin is born and how the family in general leaves him out. Sad ending and a lot to think about.