The Good Eye

By: Jess Gibson

Startling, spellbinding stories, in which appearances and intentions are rarely what they seem from an exciting new voice in fiction.

A psychic harnesses her talent for animal communication to extract a perfect revenge. A stone appears in a woman’s pocket like a charm, only to end up lodged in her partner’s throat. A condescending artist, who considers his girlfriend too conventional, throws a dinner party where he’s served a painful and consequential truth.

Jess Gibson brings us twelve probing, sideways tales that wrestle with the limits of perception and possibility. The men and women in her stories confront contradictory forces: the beautiful can turn grotesque, the exalted can fall into disgrace, the genius can be proved an impostor.

Sharp, funny, surprising, and utterly original, The Good Eye announces a brilliant new voice in contemporary fiction.

Critic reviews

“Wise, seductive, funny, and psychedelic, The Good Eye is written in gloriously precise and tactile prose, illuminating the antechambers and edges of life—apparitions, fakes, visitations by ghosts, rodents, and stray lovers—where both threat and insight glistens. Hopeful and renegade like Joy Williams and with a sly Mona Lisa smile, Jess Gibson moves between a high-altitude view and the very muscle of life to uncover what fluorescence it might hold. This collection took my breath away. A quietly, cumulatively, supernaturally brilliant debut.”—Claudia Dey, author of Daughter

"The Good Eye is the kind of collection I'm always looking for and never seem to quite find. The power in these beautifully understated stories is in the concision—and precision—of the language. No gimmicks here, just direct, clear-eyed prose. And moving, human struggles on the page."—Peter Orner, author of The Gossip Columnist's Daughter

“The stories in this bewitching collection begin in the known world before tilting towards mystery and rebellion—a book full of pleasure and surprise.”—Aysegül Savas, author of The Anthropologists and Long Distance: Stories