I put down the book yesterday and cannot stop thinking about A Separate Peace. I find the book worth a write up and gosh it is so well-written that I may make it a re-read.
First, I'm middle class. I'm middle-aged and white woman. I've never lived at a prep school. Therefore, the setting was intriguing. I'm discovering that I'm very interested in WWII, so the time period was fascinating. Those two elements would of hooked me anyway, but the story of a friendship gone awry in one boy's mind and the other boy oblivious (although he lived with the quiet introvert) to tensions. That they are 16 years old and given to peer pressure is a given, but there is nothing raw and dirty. Snowball fights, Blitzball games, Olympics. Who led the way? The oblivious friend, Finny.
This is almost a total ode to Finny and his way of looking at the world. Finny was an athletic charmer and he charmed students, faculty with his incessant talking in such round-a-bout ways that even when he is off-topic he comes back to the original thought and ever so Finny way. You cannot help but like him.
Finny is impulsive and brave. The senior class use a tree to jump off into the river. Finny and his roommate go along with other boys. Finny bravely jumps off into the deep part of the river. This sums up Finny. He asks others to do, but he'll do it himself, first. The branch is high off the ground and has lots of land under it. You have to leap into the river or come to serious harm.
While that is said there is another story. Young men going to war. They are a year away from enlistment and the US is at fever pitch. War preparation: materials, young men in senior class is pressed into this book. Shoved. Contaminates peace of mind. The boys know they have a little over a year to face possible death at the hands of two possible enemies. As the book comes to a close you read about how they work to stay out of the front lines. They do not want death. Life.
Therefore, Finny constructs his world in NOW and the narrator, roommate, always joins in. Always. The storyteller walked in good shoes threw slush and mud to find the tree. He was forced out of his shell around Finny and even 15 years later Finny goads him to be not careful. His over concentration on Finny's character is what led to the book to be penned. He had to come gripes with the fact that Finny had no malice while he himself held malice toward Finny. He shook the branch that Finny stood on because he hate Finny and did not trust him. He has to live with ending Finny's athletic career and later life. After he does this disputable thing he tries once to tell his roommate that he shook the tree limb on purpose, but Finny cannot believe this.
War presses on and comes close. Finally, its their senior year and Finny is still roommates with the boy telling the story. He's still oblivious to the cruel nature of man, but the storyteller cannot live with himself. And, then Finny creates this grand story about the wars being fake run by rich men all-the-while Finny is applying for places in the forces which turn him down due to his shattered leg. A neighbor boy, Brinker, brings both of them to the auditorium and questions both of them about the incident that left Finny crippled. Other have questions about how someone so good at sport could lose his balance on the limb.
War is dripping. Enlistments are told and flashes of the war are told. So, at the time of questioning war is also the time of questioning how Finny got hurt. John Knowles just intertwines these threads tightly. A vice grip comes to head and Finny curses the puppet court and walks out, but falls.
The boys talk honestly and then you find out Finny died while the leg was being set. Bone marrow clotting.
Devastating. I knew the end was close. I had a few pages, but I miss Finny. His lightness and his inability to hold malice.
You know darkness can be illuminated and I think the narrator of this story is so dark and cold, but with Finny's closeness he seems less remote and less human.
Worth a re-read.
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Horrible print
I bought this as it is a requirement for my daughter's summer reading that she needs to annotate in. What arrived is unreadable. It starts at page 173. Once it ends, there are several blank pages before "beginning" on page 45. I purchased on Amazon as it was much cheaper than the bookstore, but I guess it's a gamble if you'll actually get a book printed correctly as when I came to write this I saw another review referencing bad print. As to the book for reading itself, I obviously can't speak to that.
Top reviews from other countries
Samantha J-P
A quick and compelling read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 20, 2022
