Book Review: A Separate Peace

For the High School book club, the girls have decided to read A Separate Peace...it's an oldie but a goodie.  Usually Northridge makes students read this book one year...so I am especially happy that the teens CHOSE to read this book, some of them for the second time.

A Separate Peace

John Knowles

Set in the 1940s, A Separate Peace takes place at a boys' boarding school on the east coast.  There, Gene and Finny, best friends, must grow up and accept the changes that await them.  When Finny suffers an accident, the boys are left wondering if it truly was an accident or if Gene may have been involved.  What would be his motive? They are best friends?

When the war begins, the lives of the boys dramatically changes...school is no longer as important to some of the teens, enlistment sounds appealing, and now that Finny is back, nearly healed, he must face the changes in his physical ability.

This book deals a TON with the innocence and coming of age of these teenage boys. Set in a time when things were so unknown, the war that never seemed to end, and at a place for the elite where life should be perfect, we find out there may not be truth to that stereotype.  

Gene and Finny's friendship is an odd one, not one you'd expect to come about, and when their friendship struggles, it's up to the boys to solve the truth and realize their differences.

Knowles is an intelligent author and is a master of weaving themes of loss, innocence, betrayal, and PTSD that will keep you quite satisfied.  

Hungry for a story that is NOT cookie cutter YA, rather a real, gritty, down to Earth novel? Get this one. Now.