At first glance, I thought the title to Emily Anglin's debut short-story collection was maybe a bit of wordplay in the style of Ali Smith's The First Person, but it turns out The Third Person is both more literal and more imaginative than this.
Each of these stories begins with two characters in a tense social situation. Just as it seems the relationship is about to make a turn, Anglin introduces a third person who then casts the situation in a new light. The effect is unsettling.
In the title story, Jolene goes on about her son, Russel, until Lois becomes distracted, unfocused by "the seemingly immanent appearance of a third person in the room." But for Russel, who has been the victim of identity theft, there is already a third person in his and Jolene's life, "One that doesn't keep us company but won't leave us alone." The fraudster is a kind of ghost.
Each of these stories feels like it could go in the direction of the weird and otherworldly, but then that ends up not being the point. The true source of the uncanny, The Third Person seems to say, isn't the paranormal – it's other people.