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Summary: A Separate Peace
Review: A Separate Peace is set in New England in a prep school for boys. World War II is going on in Europe and is always in the background for these young men who will soon be old enough to fight. The story centers around the friendship between two of the boys, Phineas and Gene, who are in their last year at Devon School for Boys Gene is a quiet introvert, and Phineas is the popular athlete who can do everything better than anyone else and is the model for the boys. The story also centers around the group of boys who are their friends, and their coming of age, grappling with growing up and becoming men, and facing the prospect of war. Some of them are: Leper, the gentle nature lover, who is the first one to enlist, Brinker, the 'hub of the campus', and Quakenbush, a nosy troublemaker, yet he is respected by the other boys, and he is considered their friend.
The writer, John Knowles explores the various reactions of the boys to their coming graduation and possible enlistment in the military. There is a 'junior suicide society', invented by Phineas, which meets every night, and the 'suicide' is jumping off a tree into the river by the school. They also play lots of blitz ball(yet another game invented by Phineas)---football patterned after the blitzkrieg from the war in Europe. The boys try to find their way amid the competition and putting each other down. The main thing in the book is a drama between Phineas and Gene. One night at the suicide society Phineas is hurt in a bad accident and suspicion falls on Gene. It is not clear what happened so all the boys wonder if Gene really meant to hurt his friend. Gene even begans to not know if he hurt him on purpose or not because it is so threatening to everyone's sense of safety to think that they would hurt each other. Finally one of their friends Leper, the first to enlist, returns. The war has driven him crazy and yet he is the only one who can see and tell the truth about what happened. The story takes a startling turn and all the boys have to grow up, more than they ever expected.
This book is a great character-driven novel. It may start off a little slow, but as the book progresses you feel as if you know the boys personally and you seem to feel the sadness of the boys at the end. This may be a sad book, but I enjoyed it a lot, and I feel that at some point in time for everyone this book is a must read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Classic
Review: Vivid surreal imagery and detailed character descriptions are the two main strong points of John Knowles' epic novel. His depressing tone and unreal metaphors directly reflect the emotional problems he has experienced in his lifetime. These tragic experiences helped him create one of the most captivating and engrossing contemporary novels of our day. The Book was very well written with many plot twists and unexpected occurances. I enjoyed the style that Knowles used to portray his characters and really paint a vivid image of what being a student at Devon School was really like. I could relate to the things Gene and Finny were going through which just made this book even more interesting. It is easy to see why this book won many awards and evolved into a timeless classic. An overall great read, and I would recommend this to anyone, even if you are not a fan of the Coming of age / Youth Fiction genre.
Rating: 
Summary: i thought this was supposed to be like a classic?
Review: usually, i like reading classics, and i thought this sounded like a fairly good book. i was actually assigned to read it as one of the many novels i have to read for my advanced 10th grade englsih class. i was in no way impressed w/ this book. the whole time i was reading it, i was wondering why this was classified as great literature. i have come across VERY few books that i dislike, and am an avid reader, so this is saying something.
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Summary: This book is awesome
Review: Well the first time I read this I was in 8th grade. I didnt hate this book but it wasnt one of my favorites, but as time passed I really began to like it, even though it was at the dangerous unstable depths of my locker, half destryed. At the very end of the year I manages to hunt it out along with some 5 month old food and assorted junk. The book was pretty messed up, and the second I Started to read it again it seemed to be one of the best books ever. I still today in the middle of my hectic highschool life still find time to grab the same worn copy from my shelf and get lost in it. And I realized as an eight grader I could never have possibly been able to really begin to understand the themes in this book, and even now i still think hard about them, probably harder than the horrid books i am forced to read in school. The themes in this book are o so important and noone should go without knowing phineas and gene. All in all this book is not to hard, but its meaning outstreches by MILES many other "Critically aclaimed bookes", or "Classics". Most adults just pass this book off as a classroom classic but it is much much more. And if you havent read it, do that, and if you havent read it since it was assigned to you in school...then read it again.
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Summary: A Rich and Haunting Story of Friendship and Betrayal
Review: I read this book when I was in Junior High School and loved it so much I read it at least once a year for about the next ten years. I still pick it up and re-read it occasionally. The depth of the story, the complexity of the characters, the intensity of the relationships, and the sheer beauty of the writing have haunted me for most of my life. I envy Knowles his ability to write such a touching and remarkable novel.
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Summary: Phineas Rising
Review: I read this book the summer between seventh and eighth grade, Just the name of this book invokes a kind of nostalgic sadness for the insanity that was my adolescence. I have had friendships that closely mirrored this situation and still haunt me. This book should be the present given to every boy and girl on their thirteenth birthday.
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Summary: Not for High School Kids
Review: I really liked this book when I read it recently, but I also read it in high school and found it tedious and uninteresting. I think this book is simply not a good match for most HS students, which is why there are so many negative reviews here from kids who had to read it for school. Teachers would do well to notice that and pick books kids are more likely to be able to "get into." Otherwise, how will they ever love reading enough to pick up this classic as an adult and appreciate it for what it is?
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Summary: John Knowles Rules!! Great Classic!!
Review: Author and Fairmont West Virginia nativeJohn Knowles rules in this reknowned book classic"A Separate Peace".It's a must read!!
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Summary: More than a "classroom classic"--should be read as an adult
Review: It seems every teen is assigned A Seperate Peace sometime during High School...and I suspect very few of them re-read it as an adult. Too bad, because this is a novel that has so much more depth and complexity than is apparent at first glance. The simple story of two boys in their Senior year at a New England Prep school has all the simplistic leasons that we all learned in High School. But is it really so simple? Take Finny. Does he really exist? Doesn't the story work just as well if we view Finney as Gene's alter-ego...that part of him that is pure kid. A belief he can do anything. A belief in immortality. A belief he can say and do anything without consequences. Note that Gene does not get a name until after Finney falls. It is only after Finney is broken that Gene becomes a real person--symbolized by being given a name. On a whole other level, given that this was written on the eve of the cold war, A Seperate Peace is an allegory for the awakening of the world. World War Two was our first fall from innocence. We as a world community discovered that there really was profound evil in the hearts of some men. The explosion of the atom bomb completed that transformation. Not only was there evil, but there was the power to destroy the whole world. America's growth from self absorbed, isolationist country (Finney) to an actor on the world stage (Gene) parralels Gene's growth in the book. The question is, do we now have Finney back in charge?
Rating:
Summary: Simply Awesome!
Review: I purchased this book right after another wonderful but very different novel, THE LOSERS' CLUB by Richard Perez. Both books are now on my all-time 10 ten list. The significance of the title A SEPARATE PEACE is most evident in the conclusion of the story. Gene states at the end "I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I even put on a uniform; I was on active duty for all my time at school; I killed my enemy there." His enemy was fear. Gene had found his peace with the passing away of Phineas. He had finally realized he had become a part of Phineas and growing to understand him with each passing day. After Phineas had passed away and was being buried, Gene "could not escape feeling that this was was [his] own funeral..." He had come to fully understand who Phineas was and his own nature became more Phineas-like. "Phineas created an atmosphere in which [Gene] continued now to live, a way of sizing up the world with erratic and entirely personal reservations, letting the rocklike facts sift through and be accepted only a little at a time, only as much as he could assimilate without a sense of chaos." Gene had come to find his separate peace. He conquered his enemy, fear.
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