A Separate Peace: A-

Consider John Knowle's bleak and pointed novel A Seperate Peace much like descending into hell (perhaps a hell much like the one envisioned by Jodi Picoult in The Tenth Cirlce). At first everything at Devon School For Boys seems to hang in a kind of tranquil limbo. It is the summer before The United States officially declares it's involvement in World War Two and for two best friends, Gene and Phineas, that summer will be their last of fully realized peace.

Gene is a boy whose sole defining characteristic is his sarcasm and perhaps his all encompassing lonliness. Phineas is the kind of person that can dictate a crowd with almost astonishing ease. His natural grace and charisma create an aura that is almost entoxicating. As Gene would say, his very voice is music. Together the two of them go about, with "Finny" doing most of the going, rousing fellow schoolmates into doing genial acts of felony and whatnot. His rationale being that this is their last refuge from the outside world, without this merriment what reason is their to fight for civilization? Tranquility soon proves to be quite a facade however. Gene's jealously bubbles over more and more at Finny's every move and the am I/aren't I battles in his mind are powerfully realized by Knowles' pen. What starts out as jealousy eventually manifests itself in an act of cold, arbritrary violence that leaves its stain on the rest of the novel.

The ups and down that follow occur mainly between Gene, Phineas, and their conceptions of the outside world. Every tragic illusion of Finny's is brought to a hollow ripeness and every anger in Gene is brought to resolution. What they manage to create between them and impose on the world around them is a creation of fanciful rigidity. Try as they might they can't escape the cold hard truth. Gene can't escape his consequences and ultimately Phineas can't escape Gene's actions. This bleak, sweeping novel of darkness and tragedy is slow to build but stick with you, in part because of the thoughtful prose with which it was written. As I said in the beginning, abandon all hope ye who enter here.