Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent Story about Friendship and Betrayal
Review: I was assigned this book for English class, and I quickly fell in love with it. It is such a moving story about the fragile bonds of friendship. Even though the first part is a little slow, the rest picks up with such capacity it will take your breath away. This is an overall excellent story and one that I"m sure will remain in my memory for a long time.
Rating: 
Summary: This was extremely well written, but very upsetting story.
Review: I am in fifth grade and I read this for a book club I am in it with some friends and their mothers. It was very upsetting to think that a friend might do such a horrible thing to their roomate. The whole book was dark and depressing, and then at the end Finny dies. That was not a good way to end the book. I'm still glad I read it because it was good that John Knowles wrote about feelings that can be true about hidden jealousy. It was very well written and realistic.
Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't finish this non-gripping tale
Review: I think this novel demonstrates why we "don't all get along." Anyone who can give this novel a 10 is someone who I would probably find to be most unpleasant company. This is the story of two in-duh-viduals with character traits that I find thoroughly repulsive. Guess I just can't relate to sensless jealousy and lack of achievement. Somone explain to me why I should finish this book.
Rating:
Summary: A lasting impression
Review: When I was attending summer session in Atlanta, my English teacher made me read it. It is a fantastic book about friendship, how valuable it is and how fragile.
Rating:
Summary: A book that forces you to grow and take a deeper look.
Review: I was introduced to this book because of an English Honors reading assignment. I originally just checked it out at our school library, but I ended up buying it before I was finished reading it. After just a few chapters I knew I had to own this book. "A Seperate Peace," ended up being my favorite book and I was totally wrapped up in it while reading it. Since then I have read it several more times and it is always just as magical. This book is about friendship and hidden jealousy. I fell in love with the character of Phineas and felt as if I totally understood everything Jean was going through as I read. Read this book! It changes the way you look at things especially yourself and forces you to take a stronger look at the things hidden within yourself. -Dan Vincent '98
Rating:
Summary: If you haven't read it, you're missing something great!
Review: I had to read this book for Sophomore Gifted English. Let me tell you, it was well worth the time. At first, I thought, "Man, Why do I have to read something about some war?" After about 2 pages, I realized that this was becoming my favorite book. I finished this book in 4 days. This is extremely wonderful. Knowles' diction and his style makes me wonder about why I haven't began to read his others. If you do not enjoy this, you must not understand what you read. This is my favorite. Truly the BEST!
Rating:
Summary: The Youth we all remember
Review:
I will never forget the mornings I barely woke up just in time to depart to my school, with sunlight sneaking into my room, through those old, white curtains. Walking to school, with my old friends, and spending a day in that old building, which then I sincerelly disliked. And then, when the school day is over, walking slowly back, the sea tides changing, and the scent of the ever-green trees on the sea side.
This book is exactly about this - our childhoods, things we remember, things that we lost. It is a compelling story, not only interesting because of the way we can all see a part of ourselves in these boys, but because of the beautifully written descriptive story... When I read this novel, with every sentence that passed, I could smell the enviroment, one of that time, 1942, and one of my own childhood. The sentimental value this holds for me is irreplacable. I just recently read this book, and even now I feel butterflies in my stomach, not from what happened in this fictonal story, but from remembering my childhood and the beautiful memories of what I had, and never appreciated until it was no more...
All the great reviews about this book are not a result from the reader being really struck by the novel and the story, but from being reminded of their own teenage years, feeling in Gene's shoes when he revisits that old high school, and realizing just how short and wortless our lives are.
Dario Todorovic.
Rating:
Summary: A NOVEL THAT REVEALS SAVAGE FORCES WITHIN HUMAN BEINGS
Review: John Knowles was born on September 16, 1926, in Fairmont, West Virginia. He came from a wealthy family which allowed him to enjoy a comfortable life. In 1941, he attended Philips Exeter school that was very similar to Devon School in his novel A Separate Peace. Like the setting of the novel itself, he remained in the school until 1945. Knowles enrolled at Yale University after he graduated and continued to explore his love and interest in writing. He became the editor of the Yale Daily News and contributed stories to Lit, Story, and New World Writing. After he graduated in 1949, he began his career of writing. A Separate Peace was Knowles' first published and as well as his most successful novel. When it was first published in 1960, he was awarded with the Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the first William Faulkner Foundation Award. The novel was a great success. The story begins when the narrator by the name of Gene Forrester returns to Devon school fifteen years after he has graduated from it in 1944. He visits the marble stairs in the First Academy Building and the tree on the bank by the Devon River. He digs up his past memories and replays them in his mind. He remembers the time when jealousy and hatred toward his friend, Phineas, grew within him, allowing his savagery to yield. He purposely jounces the limb while Phineas is about to jump, inducing him to fall on the bank. Gene feels guilty of his misdemeanour and tries to divulge the truth to Phineas. However, Phineas denies the truth and Gene takes back what he has said after realizing that the truth hurts Phineas more. In the story, Phineas is distinguished from the others at Devon. He is energetic, creative, wild, carefree and most of all, idealistic. He is deemed one of the best athletes at Devon and is the inventor of the game, "blitzball". He tries to create a separate peace while a world war is occurring. Phineas trains Gene for the 1944 Olympics and organizes the Devon Winter Carnival. He even denies the existence of the war and by using his imagination, he explains the story of the war: "Well what happened was that they didn't like that, the preachers and the old ladies and all the stuffed shirts. So then they tried Prohibition and everybody just got drunker, so then they really got desperate and arranged the Depression. That kept the people who were young in the thirties in their places. But they couldn't use that trick forever, so for us in the forties they've cooked up this war fake." In the other hand, Gene's character contrasts Phineas'. Gene knows the existence of the war though he continues to comply with Phineas. He even recognizes the evil he has within him and finds an internal war he has against his own self which he strives to eliminate it. However, in many ways Gene is perplexed with his feelings toward Phineas. Gene envies his physical talents but also feels jealous of him. To release his jealousy and hatred toward Phineas, he shakes him off the tree, crippling him for life. However, within his mind, he has always wanted to be part of Phineas. When Phineas is sent to the Infirmary after his accident, Gene's desire becomes apparent. "I decided to put on his clothes...But when I looked in the mirror it was no remote aristocrat I had become, no character out of daydream. I was Phineas, Phineas to the life." However, as time passes by, Gene realizes that his love for Phineas subdues his original jealousy and hatred toward him. Gene is finally able to purify his confused heart by confessing to Phineas whom also accepts at last the reality of his friend's treachery and is willing to forgive him. In A Separate Peace, Knowles shows great techniques in his writing skills. Using Devon school as a setting, he depicts that there is a savage force within every individual. This force creates wars between nations and as well as jealousies in friendship. Knowles develops many symbolisms in the story which reveal the deeper meanings of life. For instance, jumping from the tree is similar to depriving the young men's innocence for the tree is describes as an artillery piece. Despite of the tedium of the narration in the beginning of the novel, the story develops rising actions very soon after the first chapter. In A Separate Peace, Knowles allows readers to participate in the experience of Gene by letting the narrator replay his memories rather than telling about the incidents. Thus, the readers are able to related to the characters which permits them to understand that such experiences can also exist in real life.
Rating:
Summary: Ya love it or Ya hate it!!
Review: Warning: this book is boring (if you're an action type of person) I'm not into the dramatic parts of peoples lives, so that is why i didn't care for it. But for those who look to see the part of life that is past the common thoughts you'll love it. For those who HAVE TO read it for school, it will take sometime and you might just want to burn the book by the end of the novel.
Rating:
Summary: Envy, Friendship, Maturity, and Death
Review: The book "A Separate Peace" By: John Knowles has symbolism and intrigue to it. The story is about Gene Forrester and his friend Phineas growing up and attending the Devon School in New Hampshire during a time of War and maturity. "I had always felt the Devon School came to existence the day I entered it, was vibrantly real while I was a student there, and then blinked out like a candle the day I left." Gene travels back 15 years to Devon to see the tree. If he's going back 15 years to see a tree it obviously has some sentimental, symbolisim to Gene. "This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find out that they are merely smaller in relation to your growth, not that they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pigmies while you were looking for the other way." What Gene is trying to express in this quote is that you will nev
|
