Every two months Jefferson sublets his stylish Soho apartment. His tenants are always attractive young women. His studio has a perfect view of the apartment, and Jefferson secretly photographs his tenants as they go about their life. He expects his latest tenant, Maya, to be his masterpiece.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Knowles (The Secrets of the Camera Obscura) probes the psychological economy of voyeurism in this creepy Portrait of the Artist as a Peeping Tom set in contemporary, noirish Gotham City. A haughty, manipulative 30-year-old named Jefferson sublets his gorgeous SoHo apartment every summer, asking a truly modest rent in Manhattan's inflated housing market. The lucky tenant he selects each year is always a beautiful woman, as his sneaky plan requires, for Jefferson's family also owns the abandoned building just across the street, from which one has a perfect view of apartment #5. Jefferson is a passionate amateur photographer, a voyeur, a liar and a misogynist. Telling his tenants he is going to Guatemala to photograph jaguars, instead he spies on them all summer, documenting their lives on film. This elaborate charade becomes a conceptual art project when Jefferson conscripts art student Henry Magnin to create a series of paintings based on the clandestine photos. The current tenant, the beautiful and mysterious Maya Vanasi, has Jefferson spellbound. He is entranced by the red dot, or bindi, painted on her forehead, which she explains is a symbolic third eye, representing wisdom, or "the window to the soul." From the very beginning, however, Maya refuses to play Jefferson's game. She is maddeningly unavailable for his secret photo sessions, disappearing for days at a time, assuming aliases and concocting alibis. Her connection to an art gallery also threatens to expose Jefferson and Henry's dark scheme. The scenes in which an unhinged Jefferson tries to piece together the mystery of Maya's apparently supernatural intuition are taut, complex and chilling. While Jefferson's smug commentary on the art world grows tiresome, this art-snob aspect of the protagonist grows out of his basically unlikable, fatuous personality, and there is a perverse satisfaction in watching such an operator disintegrate in the cogs of his own machine. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Perhaps the vicarious pleasure gleaned from reading Knowles' riveting debut novel indicates that we are all a little voyeuristic at heart. Jefferson, who watches beautiful women through a camera lens, is such an eminently proper chap that when he describes his spying as "art," one is tempted to believe him. Every summer he sublets his Manhattan apartment to a beautiful young woman. Pretending to leave the country, he secretly moves to an apartment across the street, from where he can watch the woman going about her daily life. When a striking Indian woman named Maya applies to sublet the apartment, Jefferson is soon caught up in a reverie brought on by the red dot, or "third eye," on her forehead. After she moves in, however, he can't find her. Is she on to him? Plagued with self-doubt, Jefferson becomes obsessed with Hindu culture and Maya herself. A highly original, well-written, and fascinating novel. Jenny McLarin
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Seeing with the third eye,
By Fu Xi (Anyang, China) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Third Eye: A Novel (Paperback)
This is a wonderful book. I got it late Saturday afternoon, read about two thirds of it, reluctantly went to sleep, then quickly completed it on Sunday morning despite having my own writing to do. The Third Eye is a rarity, a truly metaphysical fiction. One thinks of Borges but Knowles is capable of a more prolonged narrative than Borges and lacks his nihilism. The Third Eye plays on the edge of the supernatural at times but always stays a realistic novel though provoking the reader to ponder the nature of reality and its representation in the mind and in art. If this sounds like dull post-modernism, it is not. The characters are human and we care about them. One of the subjects of the book is contemporary art, which by and large I detest, but Knowles makes it actually sound interesting. Hindu and Buddhist philosophy play a central role but are fully integrated into the story. Don't be put off by the novel's philosophical dimension; there are also good food and beautiful women. David Knowles is an exciting new talent - I eagerly anticipate his next book.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Reality through a single lens,
This review is from: The Third Eye: A Novel (Paperback)
"Yes, yes, yes!" I said to myself when I read the jacket of "The Third Eye." Don't get me wrong, I'm no weirdo, but in this age of reality-based voyeuristic entertainment ("Survivor," MTV's "The Real World") I thought it would be great to see the other side of the situation, to spy on the watcher as opposed to the watched.Unfortunately, "The Third Eye" didn't quite live up to my rising expectations. The book is basically the memoir of Jefferson, the photographer trying to put together his thoughts on his enigmatic fifth tenant, Maya, a beautiful and confident Indian woman who drove him crazy by never being home and possibly uncovering his deceitful plans. Jefferson is quite a character, an aesthetic perfectionist who analyzes seating patterns of patrons in libraries, among other things. But his quest for the truth is missing one important facet: Maya. Because they barely ever interact, we only get Jefferson's take on what's going on and are not able to theorize much ourselves. Jefferson as the narrator is spinning out of control, and we have no choice but to follow him.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
diabolically clever,
This review is from: The Third Eye: A Novel (Paperback)
The "third eye" of the title refers to the red dot that a propective sub-letter wears between her eyebrows. Our slightly warped but endearing narrator Jefferson chooses "victims" to sublet his apartment so he can spy on them and use them as subjects for his reality based art. Although the story sounds twisted, Knowles is so terribly clever that he resists the tawdry. This is a tremendous novel -- Knowles gets almost everything right. First of all, the New York stuff is right on -- the eateries, the snobbery, the housing market, the 42nd street library, etc.... As a native New Yorker myself, I loved the New Yorkiness of this book right down to the narrator's odd food cravings and penchant for gourmet wine. I also loved the understated hyper education level of the narrator. The resulting dialogue is at times hilarious. Take for example this excerpt in which he is explaining to a prospective tenant about his background in classical music, "When I was a young boy, six or seven, I'd stand in front of the mirror holding a pair of chopticks like two conductor's batons. I'd wave the things around in the air listening to whole symphonies. I memorized Beethoven's Fifth from start to finish. Got pretty good at making up my own signals." With no comment at all, the girl replies, "When I was six I listened to ABBA and Air Supply." End of joke and dialogue continues. Knowles doesn't have to play extra hard for the laugh because he writes such good dialogue. At times you'll feel like you're in the mind of a serial killer, but actually the narrator is far more benign than that -- just a little voyeuristic in his search for art. Though evil lurks in the background, it never becomes ugly and the joke turns on our narrator. I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a suspensful, New Yorky read.
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