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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?
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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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Summary: Fowles' Modest Beginning
Review: This was Fowles' first novel and, for those who admire his fuller, later works, there is no mistaking the embryonic stages of his considerable gifts in this tale of friendship and resentment at a New England boarding school. The narrator, Gene, returns to the school some 15 years after the principal events of the book. A walk along the river and the foreboding sight of a tree overarching it is young Fowles' rather self-forced trigger to relive his summer of 42 and a fated friendship with a charismatic room-mate, Finny. Looming about that year and the one that follows is the mysterious awaiting future of World war II. There at Devon, the students are only partially sheltered from this prospect but, largely through Finney's creative and mischievous inventions find a very temporary and fragile "separate peace". The interaction between the narrator and Finney, the interlaced jealousies of two youths whose gifts each other resents, plays out, however, as less of a peace than a subtle, sometimes Hobbsean war of one against the other... with brutal consequences. So why just two stars? To me, despite the short, almost novella length of the book, Fowles fails to stay on course throughout, straying to rather easy cliches about pretentious, upper class adolescence. Some of the petty incidents have the taste of filler though I suspect young Fowles saw them as integral elements of a grander design which, unfortunately, never fully emerges. The denouement is most unsatisfying: the older Gene is forever left stranded on that riverbank within those opening pages and we, therefore, have to surmise what it has all meant to him. I mean, if you're going to use a flashback device, use its full power. I have this hunch that the author was fresh from a reading of Brideshead Revisited when he wrote this, full of ideas, but just hadn't the skill(back then) to pull it all off. Nostalgia can be potent stuff but not if one fails to utilize its power in terms both of learning and forgetting. Fowles did not miss similar opportunities in such later works as the French Lieutenant's Woman.
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Summary: Whole new view
Review: This was by far The best book I've ever read. ( my last one being His dark Materials) My friend convinced me to pick it up after her 8th grade class read it in her 8th grade english class.
Even just as it starts out, I knew I'd love it, with the great wit and style the author has.
Throughout the whole story runs the ever impending setting of the second world war. I wouldn't characterize it as Dark, but more in the way of shadowy. Its basically about boys in their last few years in school, in peace, and seperate from the war around them.
But it's a book thats so much more than basic. Its leads into how the boys learn to have to accept the inevitable growing up an loss of such a simple, seperate lifestyle, and move into drafting, leaving the school, and the world changing around them.
The two main characters are a perfect symbolism, Phineas, a perfect leader, respected through the school for his athletic skill and way with words. Yet he is also a symbol of innocence, and sometimes even ignorance. His roomate, Gene, was the shadow to Finny's athletic skill, but also the one aiming for valedictorian, in trying to match his friend. He is more plauged with experience, and continuously overanalizes his world.
I dont want to tell everything that happens, because it's much more enjoyable if you dont know, but this is a beautifull novel, and I love every word of it.
When I finished it, I was left with grim, yet hopefilled and refreshing views. Its a wonedfull book that makes you think. I would recomend it to anyone that likes looking at the world and people, and all sorts of deep thinking, but dont ruin it by overanalizing the symbolism. The overall mood is what's really important.
Even though the reading level is set for people twelve and up, I would say reading it in highschool would be you're best bet. Maybe seventeen and up, though I read it when I was 14, and loved it. Depends on who you are. Just make sure you read it.
... This book is fantastic!
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Summary: Envy and Hatred under an Idyllic Surface
Review: This novel stands the test of time. Although some young readers may find it to be out of date and filled with references and feelings they cannot relate to, I believe it is relevant and does encapsulate some of the darker, internal struggles of adolescence. Gene is a teenager at a private boys' school who is searching for an identity and finds himself forging one from emotions and responses that come easily to him- sarcasm, jealousy, hatred, and fear. As a boy on the brink of manhood in a time of war, Gene knows he is supposed to represent all that is good and peaceful in the world, but in fact he realizes that he has the potential for great ugliness within himself. He strives for the greatness, grace, and exuberance that practically ooze from his best friend Finny, but finds that he is in many ways empty and frightened of his reality and the consequences of his own actions. This is a coming of age story, but simultaneously a novel of complex introspection and depth. The character of Gene is not pretty, but he does feel real in his attempt to deal with the ghosts of his past and the guilt that resulted from hurting the one he loved. (I also suggest watching the film The Talented Mr. Ripley after reading this book...I think that there are some interesting parallels between the characers of Gene and Tom and Finny and Dicky.)
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