Phineas cover art

Phineas

The Inspiration for the Bestselling Classic A Separate Peace and Other Stories

Audible Premium Plus 30-day free trial

Pre-order free with Premium Plus
1 credit a month to buy any audiobook in our entire collection.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts.
Member-only deals & discounts.
Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Phineas

By: John Knowles
Pre-order free with Premium Plus

Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Pre-order for $11.81

Pre-order for $11.81

The story that inspired the bestselling classic A Separate Peace and two other coming-of-age tales exploring themes of disillusionment, self-discovery, and friendship, originally published in the 1950s.

John Knowles’s A Separate Peace is an American classic; a timeless portrayal of adolescence and the loss of innocence that comes with it. Set in a New England prep school resembling Knowles’s own from boyhood, the novel resonated across generations. This newly published collection of three stories occupies that same world.

In “A Turn with the Sun,” Lawrence, an outsider from Virginia, is plucked from obscurity and finds himself both beguiled and repulsed by the school’s most elite boys. In “Summer Street,” Mel is on the precipice of change with departure for boarding school imminent, and muses about running away. In “Phineas,” our unnamed narrator—whom Knowles later shaped into the character of Gene in A Separate Peace—bonds with his new roommate, nicknamed Finny, who lives by a personal code rather than a social one and ultimately prompts our narrator to be honest with who he really is.

In each of these stories, John Knowles deftly explore the victories and anxieties of boyhood, the politics of prep school, the ways money percolates through the world, and what friendship can look like in spaces where power subtly trades hands.
Anthologies & Short Stories Classics Coming of Age Genre Fiction Short Stories
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.