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.

I remember this book distinctly because seldom have I hated a book more.
In addition to being a depressing piece of work, it is about as relevant to kids today as a 45RPM single (That's something we had before CDs, boys and girls Oh, and CDs were what we had before streaming). Why are they still putting it on reading lists? What fan of John Knowles has been paying teachers to force this on the kids?

uptight boy loves free spirit boy but is too uptight to admit it. fat-ass boy tries to get in the way. then, betrayal.

I thought this book would be good. It was NOT. The End.

The most liked 1 star review of this book calls it irrelevant for today's generation, and honestly I get that sentiment. But also, I disagree! If something has an impact on us and we find meaning in it, then it's highly relevant. The first time I read A Separate Peace I was 16 (how perfect) and it made me cry. I was moved by the plot of this book. Now at 21, it captivated me in a different way. Even though I loved it 5 years ago I wasn't expecting much this time around. I should have more faith in my younger self!

This book is a masterpiece. There I said it. The more I think about A Separate Peace, the more I fall in love with it. I love the way it's written; the sentence structure and the symbolism. I highlighted a lot of quotes. This book doesn't have extreme character arc sort of character development, but it does have characters whose actions influence and direct the plot and who affect each other in such fascinating ways. So much to reflect on in this story. The emotions, and this moment, are captured with such delicate brilliance. The whole thing is brilliant.

There was a slight lull in this book, a point that I wasn't sure the point of this time around. Part of me is still shocked that this book touches me with such ferocity. But what do you know, it does.

. . . .

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. Anyway, they were more indulgent toward us than at any other time; they snapped at the heels of the seniors, driving and molding and arming them for the war. They noticed our games tolerantly. We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives which were not bound up with destruction.

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever. For me this moment, four years is a moment in history, was the war. The war was, and is, reality for me. I still instinctively live and think in it's atmosphere.

“The winter loves me,” he retorted, and then, disliking the whimsical sound of that, added, “I mean as much as you can say a season can love. What I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love.” I didn’t think that this was true, my seventeen years of experience had shown this to be much more false than true, but it was like every other thought and belief of Finny’s: it should have been true. So I didn’t argue.

The hard cider began to take charge of us. Or I wonder now whether it wasn’t cider but our own exuberance which intoxicated us, sent restraint flying... 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.

They unrolled away impervious to me as though I were a roaming ghost, not only tonight but always, as though I had never played on them a hundred times, as though my feet had never touched them, as though my whole life at Devon had been a dream, or rather that everything at Devon, the playing fields, the gym, the water hole, and all the other buildings and all the people there were intensely real, wildly alive and totally meaningful, and I alone was a dream, a figment which had never really touched anything. I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.

I'm going to give this book three stars because I enjoyed the author's style and I thought the character of Phineas was extremely well done. Overall it is a book which makes the reader think and try to understand the intent of each boy's actions. However I was extremely uncomfortable with Gene as the narrator. I felt I could not believe his views, either because he was trying to present himself in the best light, or because he was too immature to understand the motives of other people and thus misled himself. I also never believed he was sorry for his actions except insofar as they affected him personally. Throughout the book I longed for another character to take over the narration so we could at least have two versions of events to decide between. So although I liked the book I never felt quite satisfied with it.

A book should be judged on its own merit, but I don't think I can do that with this one. Take my review with a grain of salt because I'm comparing it to a masterpiece.

A couple months ago I read A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is one of those books you eat, sleep, and breathe, not just for the duration of time you're reading it, but for months after. I'm still immersed in that book. I miss reading it.

I think I decided to read A Separate Peace mainly because it sounds similar. It often appears on "books you need to read" lists but until now, I thought it sounded boring. The reason it no longer sounded boring? Its similarity to A Prayer for Owen Meany:

Setting: New England, private boy's school. Teenage boy narrates. His entire life was defined by the events with his best friend that he writes about. There's a war going on. Innocence lost.

That's where the similarity ends. While A Separate Peace is good, it's not A-Prayer-for-Owen-Meany good. It didn't live up and I knew it wouldn't but had to try anyway. 

Though it's only a third of the length, this book felt so much longer. It dragged. It's introspective and I like that in novels, but it just didn't seem to go anywhere.  It's pretty much Gene the narrator working out his confused feelings towards his friend Phineas and sorting through his guilt about what happened in the summer before their final year of school. 

Had I not constantly been comparing this to a better book, maybe I would have liked it more. Impossible to say.

Most people would list the Catcher In the Rye as the ultimate coming of age story, but I beg to differ. For me, my coming of age book was A Separate Peace. It was required reading - we were not given a choice on reading it. Unlike prior assigned reading books, I actually READ this one.

I wish I could remember more of it.

What I do remember was that I liked it. It's about a boy growing up at a prep school, making friendships and planning futures provided the war ends and that they aren't all drafted when they are of age. During the process the boy builds a friendship with someone much unlike him that gets him into troubles and hijinks and they have times where it is difficult between them, but they grow to be very close. Eventually, this friend goes in for some sort of surgical procedure, something that is supposed to be simple. And like that, he dies on the table of a freak complication. The boy is then forced to look into things beyond his limited scope and he must deal with the fallout of the death.

When I read this, I didn't know that something similar to this would happen to myself later. It's something that while not identical, it does mirror personal experience. It's a sad story, but one worth reading. It's on my shelf at present and I've been meaning to read it again to see if it still is as good as I remember it, but with all of these new books, it's hard to make time for one I've already read. Still, I give it high marks and a personal recommendation.

Oh my God. To be honest, overall this book could have earned a 3 star. Key word: could.

Istg the main character Gene ruined the whole book for me though.

Cough cough. Okay. WHAT KIND OF PERSON CRIPPLES THEIR FRIEND ON PURPOSE BECAUSE HE'S JEALOUS AND PARANOID THAT HIS FRIEND, FINNY, IS OUT TO SABOTAGE HIM?? HUH?? AND THEN THIS INDIRECTLY LEADS TO FINNY'S DEATH. SCREW YOU GENE. His best friend was the only non-garbage character in the book, and they had to kill him off. UGH AND GENE DIDN'T EVEN CARE WHEN HE DIED. Absolutely disgusted. Gene is the worst main character of all time. Fight me. There are like 189479027419247329 more things I could rant about it but imma just shut up. Peace.

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.

This text is a novel that I think is best appreciated by the mature reader.
It is also undeniably a masterpiece!
There are no heroes or villains in this text, merely representations of the many shades of humanity, as personified by the inhabitants of an all boys private academy in New Hampshire in the early 1940s. Through the voice of the novel's narrator (Gene) Mr. Knowles leads the reader through the miasma that is male friendship, and maturation. Love is never 100% without "bad" baggage, and when humans realize that we are good and evil in one body it is the struggle that follows that determines our course in life. "A Separate Peace" is a beautiful and heart rendering depiction of that most important of internal struggles. Its closing lines remind us that it is in how we react to this knowledge that defines our future.
Much praise has been lauded on Mr. Knowles tight control of the novel's style and the praise is well deserved. The book is lyrical at times, and Knowles has a wonderful control of prose. Very rarely in this text does he use more words then are needed. In the current age of overwrought novels, this economic use of words shows the reader just how first-class great writing can be.
The ending of this novel forced me to mourn some of the characters, but is also forced me to mourn for bits of myself. That is not a negative thing, only a natural part of the progression of life. When fiction speaks to such simplistic truths it is a delight.
"A Separate Peace" is a piece of perfection, written about an imperfect entity. Us!

2 stars - Meh. Just ok.

Normally I love coming of age novels, particularly classics, but I simply could not get into this one. While unable to identify exactly what "went wrong", I never became engaged or interested in the characters or plot; this one just fell flat for me.

It's never a good sign when such a short novel feels so incredibly long. It would have been utterly and completely boring were it not for the interesting quotable snippets scattered sparingly throughout.

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Favorite Quote: It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.

First Sentence: I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before.