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  • Published: 19 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9781787336155
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $34.99

The Good Eye

  • Jess Gibson



In twelve exquisite stories set across the globe, Jess Gibson's characters betray, provoke and charm, confronting what they see with their good eye - and their bad

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.

  • Published: 19 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9781787336155
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $34.99

Praise for The Good Eye

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

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

The stories in this bewitching collection begin in the known world before tilting towards mystery and rebellion - a book full of pleasure and surprise

Aysegul Savas
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