John Knowles

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A Separate Peace

Nan Huotari

“The ocean, throwing up foaming sun-sprays across some nearby rocks, was winter cold. This kind of sunshine and ocean, with the accumulating roar of the surf and the salty, adventurous, flirting wind from the sea, always intoxicated Phineas. He was everywhere, he enjoyed himself hugely, he laughed out loud at passing sea gulls. And he did everything he could think of for me.”

AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 'A GOOD READ' 'A novel that made such a deep impression on me at sixteen that I can still conjure the atmosphere in my fifties: of yearning, infatuation mingled indistinguishably with envy, and remorse' Lionel Shriver An American coming-of-age tale during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war. Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

I was not very convinced by the start of the novel but as the story unravelled, I found myself more and more invested in it. But I do have to admit - I suspect a part of me is more invested in it as it is evident how impactful it has been on some of the best work the currently-dubbed "dark academia" has to offer. I guess a recent and clear parallel would be Alice Winn's "In Memoriam" which is a much more developed novel but it is also more prone to sentimentality; I liked that, too, but I have a special appreciation for the subtlety of "A Separate Peace".

Amelia C 

Sarah Sammis

Told as an extended flashback by an adult returning to his old boarding school, it's about the friendship between Gene and Phineas. Gene is an introvert and academic. Phineas is a charismatic and athletic rule breaker. At first glance, Gene is to Elwood as Phineas is to Turner, except that Whitehead takes the narrative formula of Knowles books and turns it on its head.

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Required reading for me in freshman year of high school, at this point 13 years ago. I loathed it at first-- Gene endlessly frustrated me, to the point that my essay on this book was focused mainly about how terrible a person the narrator of the story was. I was mad.

And I stayed mad for a decade. I revisited it over and over again, to re-feel those feelings.

Make no mistake, I still think Gene is a terrible person. But I also recognize the complexity of this narrative. Gene feels about a million different feelings for Phineas. He volleys often violently between love, hate, jealousy, admiration, desperation, anxiety-- but it is extremely important to me how Knowles writes it. It is believably frustrating and so, so heartwrenching. I had a color-coded highlighting system when I read recently and I ended up highlighting so much because so much of this book makes me feel.

It's a devastating story. And I think many negative reviews have let their own feelings about required reading color their view of the story and the prose. It's not for everyone. But it's worth a try.

Required reading for me in freshman year of high school, at this point 13 years ago. I loathed it at first-- Gene endlessly frustrated me, to the point that my essay on this book was focused mainly about how terrible a person the narrator of the story was. I was mad.

And I stayed mad for a decade. I revisited it over and over again, to re-feel those feelings.

Make no mistake, I still think Gene is a terrible person. But I also recognize the complexity of this narrative. Gene feels about a million different feelings for Phineas. He volleys often violently between love, hate, jealousy, admiration, desperation, anxiety-- but it is extremely important to me how Knowles writes it. It is believably frustrating and so, so heartwrenching. I had a color-coded highlighting system when I read recently and I ended up highlighting so much because so much of this book makes me feel.

It's a devastating story. And I think many negative reviews have let their own feelings about required reading color their view of the story and the prose. It's not for everyone. But it's worth a try.

Rosie Vulaj

I loved this book. This is often the first thing that comes to mind when someone asks what my favorite novel is. I can’t exactly explain why this is my favorite, though I loved the themes of friendship and jealousy and how they intertwined to lead to the guilt the main character feels and the sorrow you as the reader feel for them, too. The way I felt when I finished this book was unlike any way I’ve felt before, and while I’m not sure everyone will like it, I would still highly recommend it as a must-read.

Elaine Wherry

Rereading this today and comparing it with other classics, I see how many layers there are to this story, how well this captures the darker aspects of human psychology (without being burdensome), and how elegantly this has withstood the test of time. 

Even over the following decades it has been interpreted as a book about war, adolescence, mental illness, and even sexuality. I think the answer is much simpler — it’s about how human nature defines & responds to its enemies — a literary Rorschach test. With a few more years behind me, fewer characters seemed crazy and the evolving process of forgiveness seemed clearer. I noticed more details and didn’t second-guess outcomes. There are so many potential reactions to characters that each reader’s response will vary and for me, that is the appeal. Over the decades, I think this is why the answer to, “what is this book about?” have varied so much too. The enemy is always changing.

All this to say — this likely means many people won’t like this book! However, I did and will likely reread this again in another 10+ years.

Asher Black

Some books serve as scripture for one's life. They are the kind of books that provoke change, or sum up a way that we intend to look at the world. For me, A Separate Peace is reverently kissed and laid alongside a number of such books. In fact, one of the two primary characters, Phineas, tends to look at the world exactly like that, with intent, not as merely informing him, but as it ought to be.

If the book has Phineas as its object, its subject is Gene. Gene is everyman, but not nearly so generic. Gene is the kind of man that can look at a Phineas and love him, but in the way that one loves a life that he can't replicate - perhaps always a jealous, hungry kind of love. It's a book about the perils of friendship. Phineas is the saint. He lives what, to characters like Gene, is the unlivable life. Except, Phineas lives it. Every moment of it, he lives. Every moment, his life is the impossible but actual and present that one cannot help but hold in amazement. And amazement so often precludes genuine love, the kind of love that needs a thing to continue to exist more than it needs the world to make sense.

The author will wound you, if you have ever loved like this. But like one of the characters in the books learns, or should learn - it's hard to be sure if he ever got it - it's better to be wounded, if it means having the truth out, than to live a blissful, mad life of selective honesty. It's a book that seethes with honesty. If you're a person who seethes with guile, you won't like this novel, not unless you intend to change. And self-delusion, that's guile too, even if you're getting away with it.

Available from Amazon.

Kimber Severance 

This book was so fantastically boring and dull, it wasn't even funny.

An American coming-of-age tale during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peaceis a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

Becky A

I read this as part of my YA Classics Catch Up Blogathon. I thought it was well crafted... but not fully up my alley. See more: http://www.beckyallenbooks.com/2017/0...

Aaliyah Jenkins

Having to read the book for class, I was none to thrilled about picking it up, but what I thought was going to be another boring story turned out to be a compelling, emotional journey.

elizabeth church

Loved it. The writing is *chef's kiss* and I loved Gene's narrating.

Fraser Simons

A thing about this book is that I had to pause, as I was just about to give it 3 stars, having more-or-less met my expectations and no more, because I actually don’t agree with, or was impressed by, its themes and what it has to say on school and the coming of age experience. But that doesn’t really matter. I like to think expectation evaluation is the easiest and fairest way to rank things 5 stars, and so “liking” it is more of an X factor question for me that sometimes propels a title into 5 stars from 4, but otherwise is lumped into expectations. 

Anyway, this story is about a young man pretty literally waxing nostalgia about his boyhood prep school days, which makes him think on the nature of his selfhood, essentially. 

As a teenager he was quite the wanker it turns out. At least when it really counts he is. Knowles compares the moral failings of the main character to the First Fall: Adam and Eve, loss of innocence, and coming-of-age. This makes sense given the historical context of the book when a world war was going on. Even the elites were set to become men by waging war, even though there is a discussion regarding the legitimacy of war and how it’s old men puppeteering, essentially. Yet it’s a life event expected of them, that the protagonist shirks even as he has his fall from innocence well before school ends. 

It feels both prescient and antiquated, in my opinion. These themes have been beaten over the head, though they are universal and interesting. No doubt this is why, here in Canada, we were made to read this in English class. I actually read my copy from my school days, now probably 20 years old or so (the spine still intact and the paperback looking mint, too.). 

But I really dislike the view of all men having an inner demon to contend with and loss of innocence is a fall, rather than an ascent; a failing of our socialization and puritanical culture, no doubt. And to the inner demon and nature, I’m sure it’s a lovely idea that so much responsibility can be adjudicated to a nebulous ingrained substance etched there at birth that we must contend with. It’s a very western book that acknowledges the military-industrial complex, draws themes from the bible, yet completed ignores the responsibility of the group and the individual to become more ethical than the society that raised them. Chalk it up to original sin.

I hated school and so the nostalgia that permeates the book; this “innocence”, when really, we are most likely the very worst version of ourselves, seems like a wild dichotomy to me. It makes me distrust the narrator and elicits very little sympathy from me. A story of growing up without any real accountability or responsibility, and our main man forever a selfish boy. 

It did solidify something for me though: Those who long for high school are highly suspect. Who knows, perhaps I first learned that from this book. For as long as I’ve been an adult I’ve certainly subscribed to that. Perhaps that began 20 odd years ago.

Separate Peace

J’Naia Stepp

I couldn’t stand this book. I do think part of my loathing comes from it being a required reading but even then I’ve had required books that I’ve loved (Frankenstein and To Kill a Mockingbird are two examples). I want to give it the benefit of the doubt and say it was wrong place and time but I really don’t think I could sit through this book and successfully make it to the end. It really was one of the most boring books I’ve ever read.

bronte

I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas.

My aid alone had never seemed to him in the category of help. The reason for this occurred to me as the procession moved slowly across the brilliant foyer to the doors; Phineas had thought of me as an extension of himself.

my heart is broken crushed destroyed demolished in pieces pulverized ruined shattered shredded torn wrecked

Kayla

Great book, but it just felt like a cheap version of "Dead Poets Society."

Ella Zegarra

Publicado originalmente: El Extraño Gato del Cuento

Hasta ahora mis lecturas para el Reto Charlie habían estado bien, amé Matar un Ruiseñor, quedé fascinada con los personajes de A Este Lado del Paraíso y con Peter Pan ya medio sabía en que me metía, y aún así me estaba encariñando un poco con lo literatura clásica, sólo que ahora con A Separate Place hice todo un retroceso.

Cuando leí a Fitzgerald sentía que gran parte de su ligero machismo era muy irónico, de esa manera en que uno hace las cosas tan solo para fastidiar a alguien, pero con Knowles yo solo... ugh, hay algo en la manera de escribir de este señor que no me ha gustado mucho, eso que no hay machismo propiamente dicho. Este libro es todo lo que temo de los clásicos, escritura demasiado densa para mi cerebro frívolo. A Separate Place se me hizo un libro muy norteamericano, tienes que conocer su historia para entender algunas de las referencias y toda esa emoción por la guerra. En otras palabras no logré conectar en nada con esa parte de la historia y sus infinitas descripciones.

Y por culpa de las descripciones infinitas estuve saltándome muchos párrafos que no hacían más que hablar de clima y por causa de eso le quitó toda la emoción del final. La manera en como el escritor nos quiere llenar de una aparente tensión para mí fue al principio solo relleno, la forma en que lo hizo era correcta, hubiera funcionado perfectamente bien de no ser por en todo lo anterior del libro me hizo cansarme el seguir la lectura.

Lo único que hizo pudiera leer el libro fue Finny y la amistad de Gene y él. Estoy un poco molesta con el libro por haberme quitado la emoción del desenlace, se me hizo bastante interesante la historia central pero los monólogos internos de Gene me quitaron todo lo bonita y personal que hubiera sido esta historia para mí, por muchas de las cosas que los protagonistas viven.

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Jeni Enjaian

A review from my old blog...

I knew nothing about this book before I started reading it but it still managed to disappoint me.

Knowles enticed me at the beginning with well-written reminiscing about a long ago summer during WWII but as I continued to read I failed to discover Knowles purpose in writing this book.

The protagonist, Gene Forrester, narrated the story in a meandering, aimless manner that lacked the focus he supposedly had as a student. Even though at the end Knowles threw something unexpected in at the end I still could not see the purpose of the whole book. Gene seemed to make epiphanies throughout the book but sometimes those epiphanies contradicted each other and really made no sense at all.

On top of all of that Knowles felt okay with throwing in the occasional expletive although the frequency increased as the end of the book approached.

I do not recommend this book at all.

APRIL LIPO

This was not a required reading at any point through my high school career. But it was my best friends favorite book and senior year she gave it to me to read.

I couldn't put it down. I read and read and read. And then, the end. I nearly cried. And the next day when I saw my best friend I yelled at her, because I never saw it ending that way.

A Separate Peace

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