Book cover of Third Class Relics

Book description

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.…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Third Class Relics as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I love this book because it shouldn’t work. On paper, the notion that an introverted boy’s quasi-imaginary friend is what holds together a dysfunctional family is a lost cause. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to try writing it. But that’s just what Elizabeth Genovise did.

It’s a saga of broken kids clinging to one another in the shadow of broken parents, all hoping against hope for the most unlikely of saviors. I found it sometimes weird and whacky but always profoundly insightful.

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On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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