My Reading Reviews: A Separate Peace

A Separate Peace

Author: John Knowles

John Knowles, an American author born in Fairmont, West Virginia, wrote seven novels, the first of which is A Separate Peace. This specific novel is said to have been a classic and won Knowles acclaim when it was published in 1959. I just found out that there is a sequel to this book, though I
don't think any of Knowles other writings go together as a set, or series. John Knowles was not only an author, but he later taught creative writing classes. You can read a short biography about him here.

I originally picked this book out of Jason's personal collection because it is short (204 pages), and is a novel. I was expecting it to be a bit of an easy read. I had not heard of it before, but Jason had to read it for literature class in high-school. He didn't think I would like the book. I actually finished reading the book about the middle of May, but am just now sitting down to write my review on May 31st.

This novel is set during World War I at a boys school, Devon School, in New Hampshire. The book starts out with the main character, Gene, as an adult re-visiting his boy-hood school. Gene, who was from Georgia I believe, attended Devon School as a teenager and, as the book kind of eerily portrays at the beginning, something tragic happened during his time at Devon. By the middle of the first chapter, the author takes you from Gene's visiting as an adult all the way back to the summer session prior to his second year at Devon.

The entire book is written as if Gene himself were telling the story. There are several characters that play a part throughout the book, but Phineas, Gene's room-mate and friend, is probably the most prominent character besides Gene. As I stated previously, the author continuously portrays that some tragedy happened at Devon while Gene was there, and his return to the school as an adult seems to be an effort to reconcile himself with whatever happened.

The author, John Knowles, writes in a manner that I don't quite know how to explain. I wouldn't say that it is easy reading, but I wouldn't consider it an extremely difficult read either. I did think that it was very descriptive in an un-common to me way. I considered "The Chronicles of Narnia" to be very descriptive, but Knowles manner of writing used a different style of wording, and sometimes vocabulary, making the descriptiveness much more.....psychological, I think.

The entire time while reading this book, I could not quite pin-point what it was supposed to be about. And, unlike most books I have read, I could not easily figure out the storyline and how it was going to play out. I occasionally thought I had it figured out, but then the angle and flow of the story would change. I knew something bad was going to happen, and I was pretty sure someone was going to die, but I couldn't predict who, how, and why it affected the main character. Now, even after having read the entire book and learning what tragedy fell upon Devon School, I'm still not completely sure what the book is about.

When I finished the book, I felt like I needed to discuss the literature with someone to process, and figure out, what it was really about. I tried to do this with Jason, but he has not read the book in over ten years, so he barely remembered the basics about it. He did say that in his literature class, there was a very long discussion on this book. Throughout the reading of A Separate Peace, I did get a sense that the issues at hand were not surface issues; they were something deeper. One of the final paragraphs in the book says:

"I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there."

A few of the random thoughts I had about what the book may actually be about are:

• The constant comparison game that we do- comparing ourselves to those around us and feeling like we are always coming up short, and always second-guessing ourselves and the motives of those around us.

• The embedded hatred, or natural propensity to hate, that we all have within us, and Gene just happened to project his hatred onto a specific person and, when that person died, the hatred died also.

• The various ways that perception affects our lives: Gene thought Phineas was always trying to keep him from being better while Phineas was just being a genuine friend and thought of Gene as his best friend.

I'm still not for certain what Knowles A Separate Peace was intended to be about but, after trying to research the author and learning about his writings, I think I understand it a little bit better. In the short biography I read, it stated that most of his writings were "psychological examinations of characters caught in conflict between the wild and pragmatic sides of their personalities." That, for me, explains a lot about this book. And, oddly enough, I now kind of want to read his sequel to this book.

How about you? Do books like this, A Separate Peace, intrigue you? What is your preferred reading genre?