Suspirium, Volume 1

Elizabeth Genovise is the author of five short story collections, most recently Palindrome and Lighthouse Dreams, and a novelette, The Numismatist. Her first novel, Third Class Relics, was published by TRP in 2024. She is a devotee of the work of the depth psychologist Carl Jung and has completed the Jungian Studies Program at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago where she will continue her studies through 2027.

"In Suspirium, we are ushered into a world where all things are known to be ensouled and alive. And we are in for a redemption journey with Fields, who is given the costly grace to travel closer to wholeness after his embodied individuation was diverted by material necessities, then truncated by death. All too many of us will recognize the tragedy of having surrendered our calling to the pressures and lures of promised security." -Donnamarie Flanagan, Jungian Analyst "Like all great novels, Genovise's Suspirium makes one want to pick it up immediately upon finishing and read it again. On the first read, one can feel Fields' deep sadness, his fleeting glimpses of love, his sense of abandonment, his narcissistic pleasures; on the second, one witnesses an author who has great control of her dreamlike narrative, with images, meditations, and relationships weaving in and out of one another with effortless aplomb. Like Fields in the great oak of his youth, we move along the storyline with 'awe, and a curious sadness.' Indeed, this is a somber work, but is balanced adroitly with a quiet hope." -J. A. Jackson, author of The Elements of Analysis and Levinas and Medieval Literature "Suspirium: a deep exhalation in the wake of a long-held breath. Elizabeth Genovise's novel has that effect on us. Lyrical yet raw, this is story of a "criminally mislaid" soul. As we witness the Chronos of Fields' life reaching its inevitable end, we mourn for his missed Kairos moments. We find ourselves rooting for the wounded hero, wishing for an ending in which we might take a breath, and sigh. This is Suspirium." -Satish Kappagantula, Fellow, the CG Jung Institute of Chicago "In Suspirium, a stunning novel replete with stirring imagery and symbolism, Genovise captivates us with her incredible gift of storytelling and her unique ability to wield Jungian theory as a psychological narrative thread. Genovise has expertly intertwined the language of Jung with rich, complex characters to create a book that is both engaging and enriching for the reader- whether they know nothing or everything about Jungian psychology." -Andrea Gaspar, Clinical Psychologist, Director of the Jungian Psychotherapy Program/Jungian Studies Program at the CG Jung Institute of Chicago "Suspirium is as introspective a novel as it is stirring, a dreamlike reimagining of Inferno if it were told from Virgil's perspective, and all nine circles of Hell were increasingly devastating memories of Dante's life. Genovise beautifully intertwines longing, determination, hardship, and lost love across non-linear fragments of a life readers will be immediately devoted to. Examinations of time and the human soul are perfectly balanced with real-world scenes of a stubborn, downtrodden protagonist coming to terms with the spiritual and physical duality of his death." -Zac Furlough of Passengers Press "'Death does not deal with personas.' In every life, there is division. Cold facts versus abstraction. Practicality versus wonder. Suspirium takes a bloody needle and hard-won thread to those divisions, stitching a man's severed components together into an actualized soul: a soul whole enough to pass into the afterlife. The process is arduous, delving deep into memory, and just as deeply into a world of dreams. And somewhere in that world, the love of Fields' life is standing at a train station, wondering if hers will ever arrive. If Fields wants to reach her, he'll have to find the balance he's lost; he'll have to feed the music he's starved all his life." -Isabel Wallace of Passengers Press