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Reviews
A Separate Peace by John Knowles: The teacher's companion by Deane O. Bogardus, John Knowles
sophiaf97's review
5.0
Beautifully written and an unforgettable story. Knowles's observation of the times is masterful and wonderfully artistic. This book is extraordinarily telling of the dark side of human nature.
misterwonders's review
5.0
after rereading this today I am going to bump it to 5 stars. why? because I can. still an incredible book that is quite possibly wasted on 8th graders.
alexicon's review
4.0
I especially loved the first part of the story before the tree business. The characters were grudgingly relatable and the writing was crisp. I love coming of age, and a story about the dark side of friendship and childhood is refreshing, though this story is from the fifties. I enjoyed this book and am glad I read at least the first half. The second half has many long and tedious paragraphs.
michaelavk's review
4.0
Catching up on Goodreads here... This is one of those classics that in theory I would've read a long time ago. Boys coming of age, WWII, etc. That's my jam. :-) I quite enjoyed it and would like to revisit it again down the road.
mary_the_librarian's review
4.0
I really loved the first half of this book. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the second half; it's just that after the "incident" it becomes increasingly darker and overwhelmingly sad.
lofi247's review
5.0
This was my favorite book in high school and on second reading it's still an all-time favorite.
anniecat's review
3.0
Actual rating: 2.5
I had to read this book for school and if I didn't I would have stopped after the first 4 chapters. The book was extremely descriptive, which is why I didn't mind the first four chapters, but afterword it got really really boring. I expect descriptions and detail in the first few chapters, but every single page, having at least a paragraph dedicated to describing something that is unimportant. I could skip a page and not miss a thing because he was going off on a tangent.
Also, He was extremely punctuation happy. He used so many comma's and so many semi colons that one sentence could be as long as a paragraph. This just makes the story boring and drawn out, which seems to be the problem with a lot of the books that I read. Other books with this problem can redeem themselves by making a engaging plot other than the long descriptive tangents. This book does nothing of the sort, other than the stray interesting chapter that moved the story along so quickly that it left the reader sometimes confused like "wait... did that just happen?"
Overall, this book was not my favorite but wasn't the worst out there...
I had to read this book for school and if I didn't I would have stopped after the first 4 chapters. The book was extremely descriptive, which is why I didn't mind the first four chapters, but afterword it got really really boring. I expect descriptions and detail in the first few chapters, but every single page, having at least a paragraph dedicated to describing something that is unimportant. I could skip a page and not miss a thing because he was going off on a tangent.
Also, He was extremely punctuation happy. He used so many comma's and so many semi colons that one sentence could be as long as a paragraph. This just makes the story boring and drawn out, which seems to be the problem with a lot of the books that I read. Other books with this problem can redeem themselves by making a engaging plot other than the long descriptive tangents. This book does nothing of the sort, other than the stray interesting chapter that moved the story along so quickly that it left the reader sometimes confused like "wait... did that just happen?"
Overall, this book was not my favorite but wasn't the worst out there...
apevi's review
Love the war imagery. Started dragging for me a bit in the middle but finished the last 2/5 quickly.
conordugan's review
5.0
This book is the reason I went to Dartmouth. I loved its description of a New England boarding school town and when I stepped on Dartmouth's campus, I felt as if I'd stepped into A Separate Peace. I will have to reread this book sometime, but I really loved reading this sophomore or junior year of high school.