| "A SEPARATE PEACE"
Author: John Knowles
Interest Level: Upper Grades (9-12)
ATOS Reading Level: 6.9
AR Points: 10.0
Publisher Recommended Age:
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Scribner
Book Type: Trade Paperback
Pages: 204
Notes: Mature content
Book Description:
This novel is set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II. Gene was a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas was a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between these two friends one summer, like war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.
A great bestseller for over twenty years, it is one of the most starkly moving parables ever written of the dark forces that brood over the tortured world of adolescence.
Book Reviews:
School Library Journal: "Intense, mesmerizing, and compelling, this...coming-of-age tale belongs in all public library collections." Grades 9+.
Aubrey Menen: "I think it is the best-written, best-designed, and most moving novel I have read in many years. Beginning with a tiny incident among ordinary boys, it ends by being as deep and as big as evil itself."
About the Author:
John Knowles was born on September 16, 1926 in Fairmont, West Virginia and died on November 29, 2001. He was an American novelist, best known for his novel A Separate Peace.
A 1945 graduate of the Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, Knowles graduated from Yale University as a member of the class of 1949. A Separate Peace is based upon Knowles' experiences at Exeter during the summer of 1943. The setting for The Devon School is a thinly veiled fictionalization of Phillips Exeter. The plot should not be taken as autobiographical, although many elements of the novel stem from personal experience, including Knowles' membership in a secret society and his sustaining of a foot injury while jumping from a tree during society exercises. In his essay, "A Special Time, A Special Place," Knowles wrote:
"The only elements in A Separate Peace which were not in that summer were anger, violence, and hatred. There was only friendship, athleticism, and loyalty."
The secondary character Finny (Phineas) was the best friend of the main character, Gene. Knowles has stated that he modeled Finny on David Hackett from Milton Academy, whom he met when both attended a summer session at Phillips Exeter. Hackett was a friend of Robert Kennedy's, under whom he later served in the Justice Department.
Following his time at Philips Exeter, Knowles spent eight months serving in the Air Force in World War II after which he attended Yale. Early in Knowles' career, he wrote for the Hartford Courant and was assistant editor for Holiday magazine, while he concurrently began writing novels, of which he eventually completed seven.
Knowles' other significant works are Morning in Antibes, Double Vision: American Thoughts Abroad, Indian Summer, The Paragon, and Peace Breaks Out. None of these later works were as well received as A Separate Peace.
A resident of Southampton, New York, Knowles wrote seven novels, a book on travel and a collection of stories. He was the winner of the William Faulkner Award and the Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In his later years, Knowles lectured to university audiences. |
