Shades of Gray

by Timothy R. O'Neill

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345354257
• ISBN13: 9780345354259
• Release Date: May 1988
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Captivating and believable! Great ghost story!

I borrowed this book from a friend while I was a cadet at West Point. I had heard all of the stories about ghosts at the academy, and this book is a delightful adaptation of an actual ghost story. I had to keep reminding myself that the book is fiction! A must-read for all West Point grads and anyone with a fondness for ghost stories!

I've read this book thirty times--and it gets better!

This book is like the ghosts that populate it: subtle, moving, mysterious, and evocative. Its author, a military psychologist, vet, and expert on many things, seamlessly integrates three time periods, intellectual in-jokes, an encyclopedia of supernatural and mythic history, a host of eclectic and unforgettable characters, the Jungian archetypal dreamscape, humor both scatological and refined, the Army and the Navy, science and the supernatural, and Edgar Allan Poe, all in a straightforward and lightly ironic prose style that is like a plain gold band behind a diamond solitare. The wonder of it is that this is O'Neill's first fiction, and (sadly) his last--that I've been able to locate, anyhow. That's all fine and good, you say, but what's it about? Here's a summary, short as I can make it: Two very different men, both psychologists and Vietnam vets, come together to head off the potential PR disaster of a ghost sighting at West Point. Sam, a sharp-witted pragmatist whose spontaneity always happens on schedule, believes the ghost sightings to be a cadet prank; Liam, world-weary, troubled, and a little wistful, thinks that the manifestations are in the minds of the seers. But neither man believes, in his most cryptic dreams, that his search for the truth will end the way it does. For women readers, there are some excellent female characters; Maggie, by turns whimsical and determined, and the complex, seductive Anna, who is wonderful at business and inept at emotion. This story has something to entertain any reader, regardless of genre interest, if that reader has the patience to read a literate and multi-layered book.