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The Good Eye
- Author
- Jess Gibson
- Narrator
- Jess Gibson
- Publisher
- Random House
- Publish Date
- 14 May 2026
- Run Time
- 4 hours 25 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
Men and women confront the limits of their perception as reality shifts around them, in this startlingly original debut short-story collection
A stone appears in a woman’s pocket like a charm only to end up lodged in someone’s throat. A psychic harnesses her talent for animal communication to extract a perfect revenge. A woman goes pheasant shooting with her father-in-law and husband, switching her aim between the birds and the men. A condescending artist throws a dinner party, where he discovers a painful and consequential truth.
In these twelve exquisite and uncanny stories, the world can change in an instant. The beautiful can suddenly become grotesque, the exalted disgraced, the genius an imposter. Ranging across the globe through the worlds of art, crime and fantasy, each character turns their gaze on themselves and on each other, to confront what they see with their good eye – and their bad.
© Jess Gibson 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026
Critics Review
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Such a good book – Gibson’s own good eye on things is the core of its energy, working beneath every surface “like underwater lamps on television programs about the deep sea”
Ali Smith
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The Good Eye is an astoundingly accomplished collection of stories. Unsettling, forensically observed and written in devastatingly pristine prose these stories burrowed their way under my skin and lingered there. These are modern stories imbued with a sense of timelessness
Jan Carson
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There’s more than a hint of the carnival in these deliciously twisty stories by Jess Gibson. This is a world peopled by amicable card sharps, con artists, forgers and general hoodwinkers who administer their own brand of crooked justice. Their victims are faithless, vain, blind to themselves, often complicit in their own undoing. Mischievous, sumptuous and quietly ruthless, The Good Eye enchants with a deft sleight of hand even as it unsettles
Bernie McGill
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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
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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
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The Good Eye is a terrific collection of stories: witty, ironic, unnerving, stylish, and funny, very funny. The stories are wonderfully written but it’s Gibson’s sensibility that’s most striking. Reading The Good Eye is like going for a walk with a charming and cultivated guide who knows her way around some of the most vivid parts of Hell. It’s the best first collection of stories I’ve read in years
André Alexis
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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
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This is a beguiling and compelling collection of stories that never outstays its welcome. Like the best sort of party guest, Gibson knows exactly when to exit and each of these totally immersive stories leaves you wanting more. A fantastically crafted collection - I devoured it
Abi Hynes
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Playful, sharp and stealthy, these stories trouble appearances, disrupt perspective, and flicker with understated humour
K J Orr
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Tightly and mischievously told, they [the stories] reveal Gibson as a master of capturing relationships as they begin to fray
Monocle
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Jess Gibson
- Narrator
- Jess Gibson
- Duration
- 4 hours 25 minutes
- Release Date
- 14 May 2026
- ISBN
- 9781529992137
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Random House
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Short stories, Narrative theme: interior life / psychological fiction
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin.Men and women confront the limits of their perception as reality shifts around them, in this startlingly original debut short-story collectionA stone appears in a woman’s pocket like a charm only to end up lodged in someone’s throat. A psychic harnesses her talent for animal communication to extract a perfect revenge. A woman goes pheasant shooting with her father-in-law and husband, switching her aim between the birds and the men. A condescending artist throws a dinner party, where he discovers a painful and consequential truth.In these twelve exquisite and uncanny stories, the world can change in an instant. The beautiful can suddenly become grotesque, the exalted disgraced, the genius an imposter. Ranging across the globe through the worlds of art, crime and fantasy, each character turns their gaze on themselves and on each other, to confront what they see with their good eye – and their bad.© Jess Gibson 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026
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