Into the Grey

by Celine Kiernan

Overview

In a heart-pounding, atmospheric ghost story, a teenage boy must find the resources within himself to save his haunted twin brother.

After their nan accidentally burns their home down, twin brothers Pat and Dom must move with their parents and baby sister to the seaside cottage they’ve summered in, now made desolate by the winter wind. It’s there that the ghost appears — a strange boy who cries black tears and fears a bad man, a soldier, who is chasing him. Soon Dom has become not-Dom, and Pat can sense that his brother is going to die — while their overwhelmed parents can’t even see what’s happening. Isolated and terrified, Pat needs to keep his brother’s cover while figuring out how to save him, drawing clues from his own dreams and Nan’s long-ago memories, confronting a mystery that lies between this world and the next — within the Grey. With white-knuckle pacing and a deft portrayal of family relationships, Celine Kiernan offers a taut psychological thriller that is sure to haunt readers long after the last page is turned.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763674090
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	08/26/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Lexile:	730L (what's this?)
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Celine Kiernan is the author of the critically acclaimed Moorehawke trilogy. She has also worked for more than seventeen years as an animator. She lives in Ireland.

Celine Kiernan is an award-winning author of fantasy novels for young adults. Her critically acclaimed work combines fantasy elements with the exploration of political, humanitarian, and philosophical themes. She is best known for the Moorehawke Trilogy, a dark, complex trilogy of fantasy YA books set in an alternative Renaissance Europe. First published in Celine’s native Ireland in 2008, the trilogy has since been published in fifteen different territories and translated into ten languages. In 2009 the first book of the trilogy, The Poison Throne, won the Reading Association of Ireland Children’s Book Award, was included in the White Raven Collection, and was short-listed for the 2009 Irish Book Awards in two categories (Best Newcomer and Best Children’s Book). In 2010 it was long-listed for an Australian Silver Inky Award.

Celine’s fourth novel, Into the Grey (published in Australia under the title Taken Away), a YA ghost story set in 1970s Ireland, won the 2012 Children’s Books Ireland Book of the Year and the Children’s Books Ireland Children’s Choice Award. It is the first book to have won both categories. It won the Reading Association of Ireland Chidren’s Book Award in 2013 and was nominated for the Sakura Medal in 2014. In 2013 the Irish Times named it as one of the best children’s books of the past twenty-five years.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1967, Celine has spent the majority of her working life in the film business. Her career as a classical feature character animator spanned more than seventeen years before she became a full-time writer.

Editorial Reviews

Pat’s narration is marked by vivid descriptions and consistently polished, well-paced prose... The otherworldly goings-on are grounded in the family lives of the village their Nan grew up in, adding intriguing nuances to the psychological drama. A gripping, highly original ghost story.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Kiernan’s beautiful and haunting novel is full of mystery and suspense with continuous plot twists and turns. The narrative voice is compelling and honest while capturing the emotional terror the teen has to face. The refreshing, multidimensional characters drive the story line and readers will connect with them because of the poignant and touching moments. A captivating read that combines Irish history with the supernatural.
—School Library Journal

Dom and Pat share a deeply loving bond, which makes Pat’s panic over Dom’s transformation palpable. In stark, eerie passages, Kiernan tells a gripping story as much about the love between brothers as it is about ghosts.
—Booklist

Confident, pungent, and poetic. Family love, loyalty, and protectiveness are palpable in a well-drawn cast of characters, and the pace is frequently galvanized with energetic drama and dialogue pierced with Irish dialect.
—The Horn Book

Atmospheric... The tension and atmosphere are genuinely creepy. ... A ghost story that encompasses heartache from two generations and the love brothers have for their twins—both living and dead.
—VOYA

Irish author Kiernan has a taut and atmospheric style, vividly capturing the Ireland of the early 1970s and its earlier twentieth-century shadows. ... This offers a keen poignancy in its revisiting the years of the now old and the long-dead... American readers may not be familiar with the Irish Republican tensions and the period’s cultural landmarks, but they’ll be right at home with eerie, heartbreaking ghosts and a boy’s implacable loyalty to his beloved brother.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

This is a mysterious and suspenseful ghost story that will draw readers in from the start. ... Kiernan is masterful in her ability to create believable characters... This is a chilling ghost story that will appeal to fans of the paranormal genre.
—Library Media Connection

The hallmarks of a perfect ghost story — terror, isolation, an unusual setting, the past intersecting with the present — are at the core of this terrific mystery. But what really makes it a stand-out? The deeply emotional connections between the characters. A ghost story with a heart. Love that.
—Justine

If you're in the mood for a scare this autumn, Kiernan's beautiful novel comes highly recommended. Just read it in the daylight, maybe, and don't say I didn't warn you.
—Philadelphia Inquirer

From the Publisher

06/01/2014
Gr 7 Up—Set in Ireland in the early 1970s, this story stars twin brothers Patrick and Dom Finnerty, who have their world turned upside down when their house and all they possess is burned to the ground. Displaced, the family moves into their summer seaside cottage. Now in the middle of winter, the cottage seems dull, bleak, and quite eerie. Suffering from horrible nightmares, the boys' bond of brotherly love is put to the test when they discover that the "goblin-boy" is not just a dream. When Patrick tries to rid them of the ghostly creature, it takes possession of Dom instead. Patrick realizes that in order to save his brother's life he must befriend this ghost and figure out what it wants and why before time runs out. The protagonist's journey of self-discovery uncovers numerous family secrets, forges unlikely allies, and proves that the power of friendship, loyalty, and love are far stronger than he ever imagined. Kiernan's beautiful and haunting novel is full of mystery and suspense with continuous plot twists and turns. The narrative voice is compelling and honest while capturing the emotional terror the teen has to face. The refreshing, multidimensional characters drive the story line and readers will connect with them because of the poignant and touching moments. A captivating read that combines Irish history with the supernatural.—Donna Rosenblum, Floral Park Memorial High School, NY

School Library Journal

★ 2014-05-14
Irish fantasist Kiernan (The Poison Throne, 2010, etc.) explores the dynamics of love and loss.In 1974, 15-year-old identical twins Pat and Dom move with their family into a drab summer cottage after their senile grandmother inadvertently burns down their house. Nerves still raw from the disruption of their lives and the loss of their home, the twins start to have strange dreams. Then Pat hears Dom talking in the night and sees a goblin-boy peering down from the bunk above him. The harrowing series of events that follows convinces Pat that he's losing his brother: Dom becomes possessed by a 10-year-old boy stuck in a gray fog that's neither this world nor the next, endlessly searching for his twin, a soldier who died in the trenches of World War I. Pat's narration is marked by vivid descriptions and consistently polished, well-paced prose: "Yesterday morning, I'd had a brother. I'd had a best friend. He'd been fun. He'd been interesting: my slow-burn, articulate counterweight. Now I was lopsided, a boat with one paddle, rowing frantically and spinning in a slow, maddening circle around the space that should have been him." The otherworldly goings-on are grounded in the family lives of the village their Nan grew up in, adding intriguing nuances to the psychological drama.A gripping, highly original ghost story. (Fantasy. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews