A Separate Peace...What? *SPOILER ALERT*

     My English class just finished reading A Separate Peace...and I don't think I've disliked a book so much since The Yearling in ninth grade. At first, I thought, "What an insult! Don't go comparing it with The Yearling!" But now that I've mulled it over, I've realized that the books have more in common than I thought.
     Jody is to Flag as Gene is to Phineas. Both Jody and Gene suffer from Dependant Personality Disorder, and rely on unrealistic companions (a pet deer and a flawless friend) to support them. As soon as anything happens to their special friend (say, a broken leg), their world crumbles around them in a volcano of fire and dispraportionate angst. The author will then go into a long, lenghty description of either the surrounding forest or the school campus and describe how some how the world revolves around Jody and Gene, and that even nature must contribute to their angst.
     What was most frustrating about both the books, is that the deep, inspirational themes become lost in pointless, monotonous detail. The Yearling could have been summed up in a book the size of A Separate Peace. A Seperate Peace could have been at least halved. Mabye that's just my preference--I have a penchant for tight, focused stories, and I'm not one for descriptive writing. Still, it's aggravating to try and think of textual references to support any kind of essay question, because all that comes to mind is a thirty-page trek through the woods.
     *SPOILER ALERT* Finally, Gene and Jody's special friends die at the end of each book, for completely random, irrational reasons. Apparently, you can die from a broken leg, and behavioral problems in dear are best solved by blowing their brains out. Gene and Jody both pout for a few days, then get over it, realizing that their special friend really wasn't that special, that what was special was "inside them all along!" Thus, everyone goes on living their lives with no qualms towards contributing to the deaths of their friends.
     Don't get me wrong, these books aren't so awful. The descriptive writing is truly beautiful, but in my opinion best appreciated in small quantities, not in thirty-page chapters. And I doubt any book will ever sink as low as The Swiss Family Robinson. Still, these two books are definitely in my bottom five.