"A Separate Peace," John Knowles' first novel, is a consistently admirable exercise in the craft of fiction—disciplined, precise, witty and always completely conscious of intention and effect—and yet, in spite of these rare assets (or perhaps because of them), the novel's final effect is one of remoteness and aridity. The theme, that of the corroding flaw in friendship between young males, has engaged the talents of such disparate writers as Thomas Mann, William Maxwell and Scott Fitzgerald. Having chosen a theme which echoes in every sensitive man's experience, Mr. Knowles chooses further to isolate it from the mainstream of life, almost as if he were examining one case of a disease which rages in an epidemic throughout the rest of the world. All that intelligence and industry, tact and talent can bring to his novel are here, but its virtues breed its defects as the story unfolds….
The force and grief which might have charged "A Separate Peace" with an electric depth are diluted by the restrictions the author has chosen to impose upon his story (especially the deliberate exclusion of parents and backgrounds, as if boys arrive at school from a vacuum) and a somewhat cautious approach which insists upon gazing from a distance upon the seething cauldron of adolescent nature. The sorrows, the guilts, the uncertainties and the exuberance of youth pass in shadow here, sketched with irony and conscious artistry, but it is we the readers who must provide the substance from our response to personal experience in similar relationships.
Harding Lemay, "Two Boys and a War Within," in New York Herald Tribune Book Review (© I.H.T. Corporation; reprinted by permission), March 6, 1960, p. 6.
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