A Separate Peace, John Knowles
A Separate Peace, John Knowles
6 Rating(s)
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

A Separate Peace

Author: John Knowles

Narrator: Scott Snively

Unabridged: 6 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/01/2011

Synopsis

Devon School, an exclusive prep school for boys in New Hampshire, is a world unto itself. But it’s the summer of 1942, and the massive thundercloud of World War II threatens the school’s peaceful environment. Paralleling the war, where enemies real and imagined are sometimes collaborated with and sometimes destroyed, is the friendship between Gene and Phineas, two students attending the 1942 summer session at Devon. Their idyllic world begins to fall apart as the war escalates, and suspicion and the complexities of adolescence result in violence and betrayal.A Separate Peace has become a modern classic.

About John Knowles

John Knowles (1926–2001) was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and Yale University. His first novel, A Separate Peace, was published in 1959 and adapted for film in 1972. In 2004 it was adapted again as a television movie by Showtime. He wrote seven novels, a book on travel, and a collection of stories. He was the winner of the William Faulkner Award and the Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jeffrey on September 19, 2015

"And the rays of the sun were shooting past them, millions of rays shooting past them like--like golden machine-gun fire." Gene is a boy from the South attending an exclusive New Hampshire prep school. He becomes best friends with a New Englander from Boston named Phineas. Let me amend that, Phineas......more

Goodreads review by Jim on December 11, 2021

[Edited for typos and pictures added 12/11/21] A short review because I can’t add much to the thousands of reviews that are out there. The story takes place at an elite all-boys New England prep school. (A thinly disguised Phillips Exter Academy in New Hampshire that the author attended.) The two mai......more

Goodreads review by mark on May 31, 2024

uptight boy loves free spirit boy but is too uptight to admit it. fat-ass boy tries to get in the way. then, betrayal.......more

Goodreads review by Matthew on June 15, 2007

This book had a profound and lasting impact of me. It is a short, exquisitely crafted story narrated by a talented but unconspicuous boy who is jealous of his best friend, Phineas--who is athletic, beautiful, and kind. Phineas stands tall as the prodigy of American prep adolescence. He is simple; he......more

Quotes

“Snively brilliantly captures the protagonist’s memories.”

Booklist (audio review)

“Like Gene himself, Snively’s narration is sometimes wistful, sometimes regretful, sometimes hesitant…Snively does an excellent job conveying emotions in scenes of conflict…This is an excellent treatment of a modern classic.”

AudioFile

“I think it is the best-written, best-designed, and most moving novel I have read in many years. Beginning with a tiny incident among ordinary boys, it ends by being as deep and as big as evil itself.”

Aubrey Menen, New York Times bestselling author

“Intense, mesmerizing, and compelling.”

School Library Journal

Awards

  • Electric Literature
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