Customer Reviews

Phineas

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A typical John Knowles writing. This book contains 6 short stories of different characters, each filled with its own events and plots. I want to note that this book is not completely about Phineas, the character in A Seperate Peace. He's in one of the six stories, alright, but it's just another brief summary of what happend in A Seperate Peace.

The table of contents:

1. A Turn with the Sun
2. Summer Street
3. The Peeping Tom
4. Martin the Fisherman
5. Phineas
6. The Reading of the Will

Here's a description of the 3 main characters involed in 3 out of the 6 short stories listed on the first page:

Phineas: "He was free, fearless, the envy of everyone-and completely unsuspecting of the one who betrayed him."
Christopher: "With his father dead and his mother sole heir to the fortune, there was only Ernie-and he had to travel 5,000 miles to find out that Ernie didn't want him either."
Lawrence: "He was neither grotesque nor courageous enough to make a mark-but for one single act he would always be remembered."

John Knowles' "A Separate Peace" has been called 'the perfect novel'. One of the characters in the novel was the remarkable, Phineas (Finney). I started this book thinking that it was likely an expansion on Finney's life before A Separate Peace. I found the opposite -- strangely, this book is a collection of six short stories. One of them, Phineas, is a severe abridgement of A Separate Peace. MUCH is left out, including the matter of Phineas' death.

Notwithstanding, it's an excellent story. So are the other five, as you would expect from Knowles. I won't detail the sories for you, but they are typically the detailed experiences and inner thoughts of various male subjects' often boys. Subjects range from painful boyhood peer relationships, to the town peeping-tom. Knowles has a remakably keen memory for what it was like as a boy. He also has a remarkably keen insight into the human animal and its foibles.

As usual, the writing is faultless. Nice collection, well-constructed and quite readable.

This book is basically a summary of what happens in "A spearate Peace," providing a bit more background to it.