Description:
Every summer, Jefferson sublets an enormous Soho apartment to a new beautiful young woman. After spinning a story about how he's off to photograph wild animals in South America, he retreats to his studio a few blocks away. Through the gaps in the boarded-up windows of his studio, he has a perfect view of the apartment he has just rented out, which he watches through his camera, snapping photographs of the woman as she goes about her life, unaware that she is being watched. It is his art project. He has albums full of pictures of his former tenants, and has nurtured a young -- now "up-and-coming" -- painter who works from the photographs.
He expects his new tenant to be the most sublime "model" yet. Not only is she beautiful and self-assured, but she wears a red dot on her forehead (the "third eye" of the title), which indicates to Jefferson that she is deeply mystical, and he is fascinated. But she inexplicably eludes the camera, and he becomes obsessed.
"The Third Eye" is a suspenseful and atmospheric New York noir, and Knowles is brilliant at exquisitely unfolding the narrator's plan in spare, elegant prose. But more than that, this debut novel is an insightful exploration of art and perception -- and an opening salvo in what promises to be an extraordinary literary career.