A Separate Peace

Book Description

Critics

• 'A Separate Peace' by John Knowles

  The novel (first published in 1959) is set in a boarding school called Devon, which is "sometimes considered the most beautiful school in New England". The story is told through the eyes of Gene Forrester, a past student, who returns 15 years after g ... (read full critics)

  readingmatters published on Tue, 28 Sep 2010

4 Reviews

• 

  I read this book maybe a week ago and it became my new favorite book. Even though I couldn't stand the anticipation and went to SparkNotes to find out how it ended, I still cried when I finished it. Hopefully, I will get to read the companion Peace Breaks Out.

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  Hpluver05 said on Dec 24, 2009 about the Audio CD edition | Add your feedback

• 

  A Separate Peace

  A story of two friends during their last year in a private boarding school in 1942. This was a good story but it didn't really do much to set itself apart from other similar stories.

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  Readingrat said on Nov 18, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

• 

  Gene is an insecure teenager, unable to accept the friendship of a talented, athletic, confident boy, Phineas, as being without dubious intent. The year is 1942 and both boys are students at an elite private boys’ school in New England. They are one year away from being of age to enlist for war. Whi ... (continue)

  Gene is an insecure teenager, unable to accept the friendship of a talented, athletic, confident boy, Phineas, as being without dubious intent. The year is 1942 and both boys are students at an elite private boys’ school in New England. They are one year away from being of age to enlist for war. While the seventeen year old seniors engage in physical conditioning in preparation for battle, Gene and his friends enjoy comparative freedom, and they, under Finny’s inventive guidance, take full advantage of it.

  These are smart, well behaved boys, respectful and capable. Finny is a star athlete, handsome, optimistic, cautiously reckless but never hurtful or cruel; Gene’s academic success and natural intelligence has him on track to be star of the school. They are equals, admired, respected and full of potential, yet Gene fails to recognise his worth and, in a moment of unthinking selfishness, he sets the stage for tragedy.

  This isn’t a novel about regret, or guilt, or tragedy (though it is all those), it’s about growth, how people shape the lives of others, of how a boy becomes a man in the shadow of war, of how friends shape friends, and how people mature through the influence of others.

  Philosophy, psychology and history combine to form the layers of this book, and it would take multiple readings to uncover them all, to reflect, mirror-like, the lessons within the words.

  There are very few books I would consider re-reading, that I can say without doubt are capable of changing my view of the world, of my place in it, of life -- that are so powerful, yet subtle, that one reading of them fails to capture all but the most obvious of their nature. This is one. I cannot recommend it highly enough!

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  Caroline said on Oct 31, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

• 

  This was another summer reading book I had. It's theme is akin to A Catcher in the Rye, but it is not quite as good.

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  Batona said on Mar 24, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Book Details

• Rating:
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• English Books
• Audio Cassette
• Edition: Unabridged
• ISBN-10: 155690469X
• ISBN-13: 9781556904691
• Publisher: Recorded Books
• Pub date: Nov 01, 1999
• Also available as: Mass Market Paperback, Paperback, Hardcover, Audio CD, Library Binding, School & Library Binding, Unbound and Others
• In other languages: other languages Livres Français, Deutsche Bücher, Libros en Español, Libri Italiani

Groups with this in collection

• The Collective (146)
• Networking Book Club (15)

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