A Separate Peace

                                       
 At Last – Peace. By Betsy Bloom | Monday, September 08, 2014 - Off the Shelf

 I have a confession. Somehow I made it through most of my adult life without reading John Knowles’s A Separate Peace. In my defense, it was an unintentional oversight. This book that almost every high school student has read never appeared on any of my summer reading lists or class syllabi, and I went through most of my academic life unaware of this hole in my education. 
I was exposed for the true English major imposter that I am by a coworker—she brought it up in passing, and I admitted I had never read it. Shock (on her part) and embarrassment (on mine) ensued, and so I decided to assign it to myself. Instead of tucking into the corner of a library or a dorm room, I read it standing up on the F train (and, I’ll admit, walking home from the F train). I started the book, as is usually the case with assigned reading, with skepticism. I finished, as is usually the case with assigned reading, with admiration. 
Every day I looked forward to pulling the slim novel out of my purse and reading for seven blissful subway stops. I even avoided switching trains when the express screeched in across the track—I couldn’t sacrifice two stops with A Separate Peace! 
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