A Separate Peace
by John Knowles
List Price:
Our Price: $9.95
You Save: $0.05 (1%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $7.52 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: John KnowlesEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2003-10-07
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Scribner
Book Reviews of A Separate Peace
Book Review: Schoolbook
Summary: 4 Stars
You can see this title on the required summer reading tables in bookstores, and I guess schools have been assigning it for almost fifty years. It is easy to see why. Its characters are all adolescents, engaged in the usual struggle for self-definition, subject to sudden mood-swings between intense affection and crippling self-doubt. And being set in 1942-43, the years following America's entry into the War, it offers a new and valuable perspective on this important period in the nation's history. It is, in short, a teachable text.
But it is a text that requires teaching. For one thing, I am not sure how easily most young people can relate to the hermetic world of a single-sex boarding school, let alone an elite New England prep school (the Dover School of the book is surely modeled after Philips Exeter, which the author attended). Although there is no hint of the homoerotic attractions that were a significant issue at the similar English school I attended a decade later, the book demands some understanding of the emotional impact of a closed world, where one's friends are everything, and every feeling is intensified. The central character, Gene Forrester, though physically no slouch, is primarily a scholar; he is drawn into the magnetic ambience of his roommate Phineas (Finny), a natural athlete for whom no feat is impossible and no scheme too audacious. The plot turns on Gene's inability to discern his own motives, or even to work out whether Finny is his best friend or most jealous rival. A moment of ambiguity early in the novel triggers an event which, though apparently soon laid to rest, will resonate throughout the book, leading to much more serious consequences. A good teacher might profitably discuss questions of truth and perception, motive and blame, on a chapter-by-chapter basis, but Knowles is a subtle and balanced writer who avoids primary colors. The lone reader who does not stop to question the text might well be left with the impression that this is merely an elegant memoir in which little of consequence happens.
The title phrase occurs about two-thirds of the way through the book during an unofficial Winter Carnival that Finny has organized in the snowy fields: "It wasn't the cider that made me surpass myself, it was this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusory, special and separate peace." The peace really is momentary; the very next paragraph introduces the first Devon casualty of the war, not fatal but nearly as devastating. Indeed, the war has been almost imperceptibly in the background for some time, but it now moves to the foreground, as the members of the graduating class move to enlist in one of the services. In the epilogue, Knowles has Gene take the war as a metaphor for the psychological battles fought at school over the past year. I am not certain that this works. But the brief moment when the two worlds, school and war, are temporarily balanced against one another is very poignant indeed.
Summary of A Separate Peace
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.A bestseller for more than thirty years, A Separate Peace is John Knowles's crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic.
Knowles, John Books
- Teens > Authors, A-Z > ( K )
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in THE ULTIMATE READS
Peter Pan (100th Anniversary Edition)by J. M. Barrie
Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); Published: 2003-10-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.18
Price in other shops:
Go Ask Aliceby Anonymous
Simon Pulse; Published: 2005-12-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.85
Price in other shops:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Twentieth Anniversary Editionby Milan Kundera
HarperCollins; Published: 2004-05-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.18
Price in other shops:
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novelby Jonathan Safran Foer
Mariner Books; Published: 2006-04-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.10
Price in other shops:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book 1)by J. K. Rowling
Arthur A. Levine Books; Published: 2003-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.95
Price in other shops:
Where the Sidewalk Ends (25th Anniversary Edition Book & CD)HarperCollins; Published: 2000-10-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.96
Price in other shops:
The Frog Kingby Adam Davies
Published: 2002-08-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.05
Price in other shops:
The Outsiders (Puffin Modern Classics)by S.E. Hinton
Puffin Classics; Published: 2003-03-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.98
Price in other shops:
A Moveable Feastby Ernest Hemingway
Scribner; Published: 1996-10-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.50
Price in other shops:
Me Talk Pretty One Dayby David Sedaris
Published: 2001-06-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.08
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
The Pearlby John Steinbeck
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2000-04-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.12
Price in other shops:
To Kill a Mockingbirdby Harper Lee
Grand Central Publishing; Published: 1988-10-11; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.00
Price in other shops:
The Catcher in the Ryeby J.D. Salinger
Back Bay Books; Published: 2001-01-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.67
Price in other shops:
A Raisin in the Sunby Lorraine Hansberry
Vintage; Published: 2004-11-29; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.74
Price in other shops:
All Quiet on the Western Frontby Erich Maria Remarque
Ballantine Books; Published: 1987-03-12; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.50
Price in other shops:
Animal Farm (Signet Classics)by George Orwell
Signet Classics; Published: 1996-04-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.48
Price in other shops:
Knowles' A Separate Peace (Cliffs Notes)by Charles Higgins, Regina Higgins, Cary M. Roberts
Cliffs Notes; Published: 2000-06-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.50
Price in other shops:
Fahrenheit 451by Ray Bradbury
Del Rey; Published: 1987-08-12; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.50
Price in other shops:
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck Centennial Edition)by John Steinbeck
Penguin; Published: 2002-01-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.25
Price in other shops:
Lord of the Flies (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)by William Golding
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1999-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.15
Price in other shops: