A Separate Peace

Book Review: A Separate Peace
By Logan Loring

The book A Separate Peace by John Knowles, isn’t a book that I think is worth reading.
Throughout the many parts of the book there aren’t many scenes that are exciting or jump out at you. If there are any exciting scenes, then there are very few of them. If you’re thinking about reading a book with the school story genre then A Separate Peace isn’t the book you should choose. In this book there are some new scenes every now and then, but when that new scene or any scene is, it tends to go on forever and most of them are pretty boring. You have to love reading if you think that reading A Separate Peace is exciting. Some parts can get to be confusing if you don’t follow along that well throughout the book. There are parts were you can’t tell if they are going from past to present tense. Once again you have to love reading or you can just understand it really well to know when the story switches tenses.

Gene and Finny represented that high school friendship I think/hope we all had. That person that would always follow your wild schemes. This bromance is established strong and quickly, which is why twist number one caught me by surprise.

I'm not sure how this materialized: was it written to depict the prep school jealousies? Was this first-step simple training drill for war supposed to show the incipient reach of 'war'?

The story is set in 1942/43 with the boys at age 17 as the fall semester starts in '42. This would be the exact same age as the author, John Knowles. The elite New Hampshire prep school setting is also a carbon copy of Knowles attending Phillips Exeter Academy in NH.

We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to preserve.

Surely this is an anti-war theme book. We see Brinker undergo radical internal changes without even being drafted yet. We see Leper go off to war and get Section 8 without even going to battle. And we see that basic training exercises have their danger too. Some parents are nostalgic about war, wanting their sons on the front line. Some boys brag like they might want 'action', yet they seek to volunteer for an easier service prior to being drafted (into the tougher infantry).

I recall an interview in the mini-series "Band of Brothers" about how absolutely everyone wanted to be in the war. You need to be "1A" to be 'allowed'. If screening declared you to be "4F" and unfit to serve, boys committed suicide!

Finny said: I'll hate it everywhere if I'm not in this war!

But I also wonder about the anti-prep school thoughts here. These schools are depicted to always have boys over-reaching their authority as they strive for leadership positions. This leads late in this book to an inquisition late at night. I was not sure on why this needed to happen, except that with a hint of blame being found, there were forces that refused to just stop over-thinking.

The final twist late in the book really blind-sided me. I was one page away from it happening when I paused for dinner. I didn't feel the need to force myself to finish the book that night. But what happened next took a 4* book and sunk it to 3* for me.

Maybe this all is supposed to be this way - making me angry with the outcome. This is the classic anti-war theme. Had there been no war, there would have been none of the negative consequences that ruled this book. I was just watching Schindler's List last night and had to turn it off. Too truthful. Too brutal.

I just kept thinking that Knowles would do more with the boys' relationship, as there was very suggestive writing about the closeness of Gene and Finny. But even this had the war, and the prep-school inquisition take a crushing toll.

3.5* that I just can't round up. The clarity for the two twists in this book needed to be much more clearly rationalized for me. (but isn't that the irrationality of war?)

...three days after writing this...
I elevate to 4* purely BECAUSE I was angry. All the innocence lost here due to war, and they were still in school!
Additionally, I elevated this onto my lgbtq shelf. This is not a typical lgbtq, rather these two boys had that love for one another that goes unnamed or unrecognized in society where it is never spoken about. But as I chose quotes to save, I found multiple I had to file under 'bromance'. It was the kind seen in the camaraderie of soldiers, but a bit more.

I was surprised with the many bad reviews of this book . I really enjoyed it. Very poetic , descriptive writing . Love this style of writing . It is a story of young boys trying to ready themselves for the war . It did not discuss the harshness of the war . It focused primarily on the connections with the young boys friendship while they were in school. It was a little depressing in some parts but overall a great read.

September 26, 2020

I did a re-read of this via audio book simply because I needed something to listen to. My original opinions still hold. (See original review below.) I will add that it didn't seem realistic to me that Gene would remain on friendly terms with Brinker, considering Brinker was the one who ginned up the kangaroo court that led to tragedy. I had completely forgotten the events that took place after the kangaroo court, but that's not surprising, as it has been almost twelve years since I read it.
The most interesting aspect of the novel is the time frame, with boarding school boys, Class of 1943, facing the prospect of being sent off to fight in World War II. That looming future diminishes the carefree nature we usually associate with boys of that age.

November 8, 2008

A short novel about boarding school shenanigans gone very bad. Takes place in New England in 1942-43. The writing is good and much of the story has merit. Many of the characters are quite well-developed for such a short book. However, I found the midnight tribunal or kangaroo court or whatever it was to be unrealistic and unlikely to ever happen. Since that scene and its aftermath are so central to the story, I was left feeling somewhat lukewarm about the whole affair.

Right time, right place, right book: triple axis of alignment, all shook up. I don’t say ‘masterpiece’ often, but this is what ’a separate peace is’: no if, buts and doubts. An understated study of the death of the soul.

On a personal level, it resonates with me because I too, did something incredibly ill conceived a couple of years ago, and just like Gene Forrester, it hangs over my head like the sword of Damocles: a silent, corrosive necrotisis of the soul. There is only one way to score peace on this earth: when Gene says ‘my war ended before I ever put on a uniform’, what he means is his life ended. Not his existence: he goes on to eat, sleep, shit and fuck, but not really to live. Its a defence mechanism really: to eradicate the pain, you have to stop caring. If there is nothing to care about, pain becomes obsolete. But. So does love, joy de vivre and happiness. Gene Forrester and I, shared eharmony.

Beautifully written, suspenseful, psychologically tortuous study of whats real and what is mirage, friendship and enmity, good and evil, pinned on a hauntingly escalating plot structure of thriller cum horror.

Gene Wilder. My doppelganger. :Who is he? Who are his people? He appears at a New England School from the Midwest(?) and already he is a step apart: an outsider. Not as athletic, o witty as his friend Finny, Gene looks for his niche: a place to assert himself. But what if you’ve got nothing? Well. You always have easy access to this Hydra, if you want to tap that water: ambition. Gene is going be academic. Rote leaning ensues: there is no joy in learning, there is no accumulation of knowledge wealth: only a stockpile of grades, earned with blood and sweat, and maybe resentment. This stockpile, this tower of achievement, the house that the ‘wiseman’ built on sand: it sometimes has the tendency to lean, like the tower of Pisa. And then, everybody knows . That you worship false gods. And when Finny finds out that Gene simply isn’t a natural (at all this studying), all hell breaks loose. There is probably only one main difference between Gene and myself. When I lash out, its usually to harm myself than someone else. But, in the end, thats a moot point, because, as Gene’s little story shows so tersely, hurting someone else is just the same as hurting yourself. Perhaps worse. You can forgive yourself for inflicting all kinds of self harm, but you can never absolve yourself for fucking some one else over. And, if that someone happens to forgive you , and you can’t forgive yourself, then its game over. Life without living.

Now, Gene and I have to go lick our wounds. Its almost night time: we both know the night ‘suspends but never resolves anything’. But its the only other way to score a temporary reprieve.

This novel opens 15 yrs after the events in the remainder of the book. The narrator, Gene Forester, has returned to Devon School in N.H., where he was a student during WWII. He intentionally seeks out two site, both integral elements of the story: a marble staircase in one of the academic buildings and a particular tree on a loft above a river.

The primary focus of the story o the novel involves the love-hate relationship between Gene and Finny. The former is a quiet, somewhat insecure, intellectual while the latter is a confident athletic leader among a group of boys. When Finny prods Gene to jump from a branch o the aforementioned tree into the river, Finny creates a secret society incorporating this action as an ongoing ritual. When an incident occurs involving the tree, the stage is now set for the remainder of the novel.

This coming-of-age is primarily a character study. Although the novel was well written, I found myself frequently plodding through the pages. I did enjoy the author's choice of works in sentence construction, such as, "The engine of Dr. Stampole's care roared exhaustedly." I realize that I should love this book since it is the best known of Knowles books and is frequently required reading for high schools, I'm afraid that I found myself frequently disengaged.

“It wasn’t the cider which 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.”

To put it plainly, this book astonished me! It was alive with a plethora of my favorite literary elements and explorations of: loyalty, friendship, captivating descriptions, simple lyricism, poignant aspects of war, and examinations of the human condition. The list is endless really. 

The story begins 15 years after the events of the story occur. Gene, our first person narrator is visiting his old (all-boys) private school, Devon, which he attended in 1942, during the early years of the second world war. He visits two specific and personal places on the school grounds; as the reader, you do not know the significance of these sites until Gene brings us back in time to his days at Devon. As he was walking to and from these noteworthy places, it started to rain, making his jaunt around the grounds a very muddy one. He then says, “Changed, I headed back through the mud. I was drenched; anybody could see it was time to come in out of the rain.” Then the next line brings us back 15 years and sets the rest of the story in motion. 

What I found so moving about this type of transition from present to past, was the way he used the element of rain to signify his past memories. “...it was time to come in out of the rain.” It was time to leave these things remembered, and move on. What we later realize is that Gene is unable to move on. 

16 year old Gene then introduced us to his room mate and best friend Phineas. A smooth talking, daredevil athlete, who’s handsome features Gene can’t help but describe in stunning detail. “Phineas just walked serenely on, or rather flowed on, rolling forward in his white sneakers with such unthinking unity of movement that “walk” didn’t describe it.” I myself couldn’t help but feel a degree of infatuation as I read this line, and many more concerning even Phineas’ mere movements and tone of voice. Even the way his eyes shined their hazel green was transcribed to us. Was this Gene’s inner desire coming through, or a hint of jealousy? That is left up to the reader. 

This book is one that puts a lot of weight and meaning into its title. As I read, I kept circling the amount of times “peace” was used in a sentence, and ultimately I lost count. John Knowles illustrates, in a very affecting way, the indirect effects that the war had on these young boys. “Why go through the motions of getting an education and watch the war chip away at the one thing I had loved here, the peace, the measureless, careless peace of the Devon summer?” This feeling that war and peace are muddled together can also be compared to the way Gene and Phineas also “are muddled together.” I’ll let you find out which one is war and which one is peace. I will also leave you with this last quote, because I find it confoundingly raw. “What deceived me was my own happiness; for peace is indivisible, and the surrounding world confusion found no reflection inside me. So I ceased to have any real sense of it.”

This book broke my heart, but at least it did it while using beautiful words.

I remember viscerally hating this - I found it incredibly boring and I don't think anything really happened except a whole bunch of wank about being a moron and running and a paragraph lovingly describing a side character's butt. I don't even know.

Furthermore, it was for eighth-grade English. My teacher gave us a quiz on some random detail-bits, and I remembered little things like how many years had passed between Point A and Point Boring, and that somehow meant that I wasn't actually UNDERSTANDING the damn book (because it is of course impossible to have a sticky memory and still glean deeper meaning from one's reading), so Teacher and Teacher's Pet called me "petty" for the rest of the day. I totally cried when the Pet got in on it, but that was also because that week SUCKED - my aunt had died of cancer earlier in the week, and the day of the quiz was when I was leaving around noon to go to her funeral.

...I never actually review books, I just rant about their associated circumstances. Sorry.