In Peace Breaks Out, John Knowles revisits Devon School, the New Hampshire prep school that provided the setting for his 1950s best seller, A Separate Peace. Perceptively and sensitively written, A Separate Peace movingly chronicled the struggle between two adolescents who, too young to enlist, discover the enemy not in Europe or in the Pacific, but in themselves. Unfortunately, Knowles' new novel lacks the power and tightly wrought structure of his earlier work.

The time of Peace Breaks Out is September 1945; the war has ended, and veteran Pete Hallam returns to his alma mater to teach American history. From the beginning the book disappoints. As a veteran, Pete must of necessity reflect on his experiences at the front, but those reflections are gratuitous, vague and literary. His anguish is reported and cursorily analyzed rather than felt.

Knowles' intentions are lofty. Like W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day...