[A Separate Peace] is, indeed, a novel of altogether exceptional power and distinction. [Mr. Knowles] writes of a New England preparatory school—what over here would be called a public school—and of two sixteen-year-olds in particular, Finny and Gene, the narrator, who looks back on his wartime schooldays from the standpoint of his present adulthood.

It would be easy to say that Finny is the brilliant, outward-looking athlete, Gene the first-class brain and subtle self-analyser, and that from the element of latent, hardly formulated antagonism which is present in their close friendship springs the tragedy which causes Gene the man to write: "I did not cry then or ever about Finny. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his family's strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case."

It would be easy, but it would be an over-simplification. Mr. Knowles's world is the real world where black-and-white character-contrasts rarely lie conveniently to hand. Gene and Finny can slip in and out of each other's roles and yet remain entirely themselves while doing so. Their relationship has that subtle elusiveness which is entirely human and which novelists, with good reason, find desperately difficult to convey.

The other characters—masters and boys—are all given life and individuality. The school itself, gradually losing something of its relaxed, patrician manner as the war draws closer, is described with precision and economy. There is no gush. There is no smut. If this is Mr. Knowles's first novel it shows an astonishingly firm grasp of the right end of the stick.