"A Separate Peace" Review

"Beginning with a tiny incident among ordinary boys, it ends by being as deep and as big as evil itself."

_{-Aubrey Menen, on A Separate Peace}

I first read this book when I was a junior in high school, when I was the exact age as the story's protagonists. So I'm sure that you can understand that my initial impression of it was a generously sarcastic "meh". In my opinion, it was okay, and it was certainly gay enough to satisfy my bouts of snark and enjoyment in corrupting the high school required reading. But it was uneventful and filled with every war is bad/growing up is bad/corruption of innocence plot that any high school kid was forced to read a million times before. I was expecting to feel the samefeeling of being appeased but unmoved when I returned to it for my Adolescent Literature class. To my almost guilty surprise, I realized that I had overlooked perhaps the most heartbreakingly beautiful book I've ever read.

In my past's defense, John Knowles' A Separate Peace is written very deceptively like the cookie-cutter YA fiction we've hated since grade school. The story starts with a young man, Gene Forester, who meets a new friend, Phineas, whom everyone calls "Finny". Finny is an extraordinary person who everyone adores, but seems to adore the unremarkable, quiet bookworm Gene the most. The two have a spat, and then tragedy strikes. This is then followed by more understanding each other and their peers, followed by things looking up, followed by another tragedy, followed by things looking up again, followed by the final character death at the end that suddenly transforms our hero into a broken adult.

We've seen this before and then some, right? This is the kind of thing us English Majors beat up Newberry Authors for. Coupled with this, there's no real exciting changes of scenery, no shocking plot twists, and even the final death at the end is unceremonious to the point of being contrived. Naturally, the internet has flooded with complaints of all those who were forced to read it in high school, founded it aggressively unremarkable, and retain a sort of vindictive bitterness that it remains as popular and well spoken of to it's day. So how can I, the champion fanbetch, dare to write a positive review of it?

Because you need to be an adult to understand this book.

It's a tragic irony for a lot of adolescent literature. This is a book that's not written for teens, but rather an adult (quite strikingly) remembering what it was like to be a teenager. And he does it so well, and so eerily clearly, that any teacher would assume that any teenager who reads this will be able to understand as well. But that's not what Knowles wrote this story for.

This book is about war and peace, but not in the traditional sense provided to us by World War II, the obligatory history that looms in the story's background. This is the story of the war of adolescence, the war each one of us had to fight. Being a teenager is perhaps the most violent point of time and space I have ever been a part of. It's a savage battle between every single person that you ever run into. It is a war against your parents, your teachers, your classmates, those in positions of authority, the immediate and the never met, and even your dearest friends, yet it is a war that seems not to exist. And it is a war that ones only ally is oneself, an ally that one knows nothing about save that this ally absolutely abhors you.

Stranger still, this story is about peace, and how devastating it is for these adolescent soldiers to encounter. Gene's conflict arises not by his peaceful adolescence being shattered by war, but by his vague and perpetual war being shattered by peace. His ultimate crisis is coming to terms with the fact that with everyone (seemingly) against him, and he not being the strongest, fastest, bravest, or surest to survive, someone out there cherishes him anyway. Indeed, someone stronger, faster, braver, and surer to survive in the world cherishes him, a nonsense so mighty that it sends Gene's world spinning out of orbit.

It is an overwhelming battle, one no teenager is prepared for. What's more, we see it through the lens of Gene himself, both past and future. We don't hear it from the voice of a helpfully omniscient narrator who can explain it in simple terms for all to understand, but the poetry and warmth of an adult, as well as the fright and frustrating vagueness of the teen. Only when you can understand both can you love this book. If you've missed out on either, you won't get it, and you'll be tremendously bored for your efforts. But if you can read A Separate Peace with this mindset, expect a tale that's rich with subtle detail, wisdom, cruel and simple pain, and an ending that fills the reader with loss and fulfillment. What an average teenager would call an empty and uneventful story will become a story that you can't put down, not by virtue of the edge-of-your-seat adrenaline that any other view would expect, but in the way that only a short, beautiful story lurking in all our histories can provide.