A Separate Peace

Rating:
Summary: Can You Say: BORING?
Review: I found this book to be incredibly boring and pointless. The author goes into topics that I believe he knows little about and therefore cannot understand. Also, there is way too much detail. When you write many pages describing something insignificant and unimportant, face it, you have a problem. To tell you the truth, if I could have given this book zero stars I would have. Those who classify this book as a "classic" definately overestimate it. Sorry John.

Rating:
Summary: One of the Best novels available!
Review: I was assigned to read this in my sophomore year of high school. I didn't read it until the summer before my senior year. It turned out to be one of the best summer reads I'd read. Knowles creates a great story of friendship and loyalty that is invaluable to a young mind. Perhaps students that were "forced" to read it for school should take another look.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful.
Review: I did this book as part of a Literature class for accelerated students in high school. As I recall, it was the most popular book we did that year. Being teens ourselves, we could understand the boys' quiet desperation to find a separate peace somehow, somewhere in a world that was being turned upside down by the onset of WWII; an attempt to make sense of the world while struggling to retain the youthful innocence that makes young people immortal for a time. The characters in the book are very real, from "Leper" Lepellier to Finny and Gene. Anyone who is truly honest with himself will recognise aspects of himself in all of them, and maybe come out a better person for having recognised and faced them. To say that this book is just about Gene being stupidly jealous of Finny and causing the latter's downfall is to reduce the Mona Lisa to a lousy painting of a simpering lady with sombre taste in clothes. It's a powerful, gripping story which still speaks to us even today.

Rating:
Summary: A novel full of emotion
Review: This is the best book I have ever read. This book is for people who are looking for a dramatic novel. The book takes us to the life of Gene Forrester as he remembers Phineas, his best friend in his adolescent years. We go through his relationship with Phineas, a friendship that is bonded strongly by all the confusion, peace, agony, suffering, and happines that they live trough. It is really unpredictable and stirs up emotions as the two best friends go through heart aching trageties.

Rating:
Summary: I did not like it. It was terrible
Review: This book had no character what so ever. It is a book that no one can relate to and makes a big deal about some kid dying because he fell off a tree while millions of other american soldiers are on the other side of the world giving there life for there country.

Rating:
Summary: very boring, pointless stupid book.
Review: I found this book extreamly hard to read. It took my entire summer. It is very boring and the author tries too hard to use dictionary words. People call it a classic, well my time is too important to read this.

Rating:
Summary: What can I say? I gave it one star.
Review: ok, I can understand how this book could be interesting if maybe someone else had written it or something. I was FORCED to read this stupid book for english. Well, I liked Finny. I think he was a victim of a messed up, crazy "friend" who just decided one day that Finny was conspiring against him. Gene may have been a good student, but he was a screwed up kid, not the brightest crayon in the box, you know? Leper was a little scary, but not as scary as Brinker Hadley. He thought he owned the world and everything in it. He need help. Anyway, if John Knowles supposedly put himself in all four of the main characters, I'm hoping the majority of himself was in Finny, because, if not, he's messed up.

Rating:
Summary: Really Boring and Tiring
Review: For my honor's english class, we had to read this novel over the summer. I was in high hopes that this book was going to be excellent, but was very disappointed to learn that the book was incredibly boring, and did not hold my interest for very long. I do not recommend this book for reading pleasure, and wished that I could have read a book that relates to teenagers this day in age.

Rating:
Summary: A must-read for all high school students
Review: A Separate Peace by John Knowles is one of the best books in American literature. He gets into the minds of the characters and creates unique and realistic personalities for all of them. It is a moving book that everyone can relate to. It is not about two boys at prep school during World War II, but about two boys and their friendship and betrayal. THIS is what groing up really is!

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding and fantastic novel.
Review: The only reason I gave the novel 4 stars is because I'm 14 (an adolescent, nonetheless, however not quite 16 years of age as are those characters in the book)--and I found quite a few assumptions made by Knowles in his portrayal of the adolescent mind in general. Nevertheless, this book had real meaning: it was outstandingly interesting. Knowles effectively managed to wield the English language to create a wonderful prose and an ingenius parable. Read this book, it will really surprise you (and, many books I have read I found to be boring and predictable--this was not one of them).