A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles, begins as a story of innocent boys at a summer boarding school in New England and ends as a tale bigger than war and almost as deep as evil itself.
The story is set mainly at Devon, a beautiful, heavily-wooded boarding school in a quiet seashore town. Taking place in the 1940's, war has just begun to take hold of the school in its summer months. Gene, the mild-mannered, introverted narrator, is befriended by Phineas, his opposite. Outgoing, honest, popular, and athletic, Phineas is the star of school that summer. Both boys are seniors, just ripening to be drafted. But after an unfortunate "accident," the summer ends with a shock and Gene is thrown into adulthood with optimistic Phineas left as the victim.
The story that comes from the events of that summer is thick with grief, with potent images and strikingly diverse characters who all struggle within themselves to live in a world where boys like them are taken daily to war. The book itself is not amazing because of its storyline, but because of the remarkable character development which paints an entirely new picture of a world at war, and how this world can invade the quiet lives of innocent New England boys.
Much of this character development is derived from the active tension between Phineas and Gene. Both highly competitive, much of the book is the inner struggle for Gene to accept that Phineas is not out to hurt anyone. The novel reads very quickly, not simply because of its short length but also due to the rising and falling of Gene's inner psyche unfolding onto the page. This inner struggle is known only to Gene, and as his one greatest secret comes to light, that struggle is projected outward and into brutal boys in a hard, war-bound world.
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