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by Graham Greene, Jane Lundblad (Translator)

Chekhov once suggested that a writer could best convey the effect of moonlight by describing it reflected in a broken bottle on a river's edge. Graham Greene here deals with love in like fashion: an adulterous love affair, a love which turns to hate, and a hate which turns at last to a bitter acknowledgement of God.

"For me one of the best, most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody's language." - William Faulkner

"It would be a very hardened sinner who could read this love story without a pang of recognition, a momentary enlargement of the heart." - Time

"It remains from first to last an almost faultless display of craftsmanship and a wonderfully assured statement of ideas. . . undeniably a major work of art." - Anthony West, The New Yorker

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Romance, Audiobook, Literature, Novels, British Literature

1 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Henry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is extremely special to me. It amazed me. It flipped me around and turned me upside down. I was overtaken, absorbed, and transfixed in a whirlwind of emotion.

The End of the Affair was exactly what I needed to help me through some recent difficulties in my personal life. (No, I didn't have an affair with a married woman, heh. But a relationship did recently end for me, and that kind of thing is painful, and tough to deal with, as you probably know.) This novel helped me through all that: By channeling the thoughts, emotions, and lessons from the book, I was able to understand myself and my situation better. I read it at just the right time and the impact was healthy, significant, and powerful.

It seems that most good books show, in some way, how ridiculous we all are. And what is more ridiculous than love? The End of the Affair shows the nuances, complexities, depths and strengths of love; how serious, dynamic, and mighty it is, while also showing how selfish it is. And you can't really have love without hate, can you? Love and hate of another; love and hate of self; love and hate of God -- or of his nonexistence -- are the major themes. The love depicted in the novel is not a halfway love (is there such a thing as a halfway love?). It is in extremes: it either loves or hates. Love in all it's splendor and horror, Greene gets it.

The novel is also about life, and death, and fate, and God, and all the struggles associated with these things. The existential struggle of the individual; the selfish power of our personalized emotions in our ultimate search for love in its many forms.

"But if I start believing that, then I have to believe in your God. I'd have to love your God. I'd rather love the men you slept with."

The highs that are the state of being emphatically in love are conveyed beautifully in this novel.

"...the moment of absolute trust and absolute pleasure, the moment when it was impossible to quarrel because it was impossible to think."

The way your very insides change -- not just when you're with that person, but how everything in life has a more ecstatic, elated feel to it, because the person you love is always in the back of your mind. And, because of that, and because love makes you happy -- releasing all kinds of awesome chemicals -- you associate your beloved with almost everything, and almost everything seems and feels better. Life is so much better when you're in love, and as you turn the pages of this novel, you feel it.

The way you put your best self forward every time; the positive inner desire and motivating factor of trying to prove that you're completely worthy, and the very best for that person. The electricity that starts upon contact; how it never really goes away, but constantly gets reaffirmed through smiles, and small gestures, and actually grows stronger the longer you're together.

"It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love."

The fucked up selfishness of it all. The fact that while our emotions and inner selves are on high alert and more intense, so is our awareness of our shortcomings and weaknesses. We become extremely self-centered. ME. The insecurity, the jealousy; the panicky anxiety -- how all those subconscious, hidden pathologies start to surface -- you push them back, but you're made aware that they are there.

The lack of control.

"Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust."

Yet even with your insecurities and imperfections, because you're seen as perfect in your lovers eyes, you start to see yourself as perfect. Deep down you know it's a farce (which is probably why jealousy and pettiness often begin to play roles), but it feels great, and it makes you love your partner all the more... but still, in the back of your mind.....

"If I'm a bitch and a fake, is there nobody who will love a bitch and a fake?"

The desperate longing, the fear of finding that it isn't real; that the other doesn't feel the same way.

"I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing."

The fear of it ending.

"Sometimes I get tired of trying to convince him that I love him and shall love him forever. He pounces on my words like a barrister and twists them. I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can’t realize that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud, I say to myself silently and write it here."

The way you love that person with your full throbbing heart; then hate that person with every angry, hateful fiber in your very being. But oh the joy. Oh, the complexity.. Oh, the might. Love and Hate.

Then it ends. Your world is shaken to the core. You see something that reminds you of the person and the times you had, and feel like someone punched you in the stomach. And you see that person in everything, so the pain is always there. The sharp, unbearable pain, like your whole life has been torn upside down; the sick feeling; the empty feeling. You used to love yourself. You now hate everything. Life was splendid, amazing, magical. Life is now dark grey. Painful. The grasping for what was, for understanding what happened. What did I do wrong? The brooding. The self obsession. Did she ever really love me in the first place? What could I have done differently? If only I hadn't said this, or given that impression. Why didn't I see it coming? Paradigm shift all you can, it doesn't go away; the love wants to exist.

But it can't.

The gloomy nothing; the hugging of air; the unfulfilled images and dreams. Just because life has become painful for you, you want it to be painful for everyone else; or you at least you want them to have sympathy for you. How dare they be so happy. Look at me. Pay attention to my pain. How dare others smile and enjoy life. Do you know my pain? ME. My heart, my pain –- nothing else matters –- listen to me, ME, ME. Love, whether in its existence or broken, is like that: it consumes and is selfish.

"I hate you, God. I hate you as though you actually exist."

All in all, broken hearts heal with time, especially if a new love is found. But I think there is a part of the heart that breaks and never comes back; that never fully heals and thus makes us at least a little transformed from who we were before our heart was broken. And slowly through time you realize that not only did you lose a part of yourself, but a part of you gets generated that wasn't there before. The whole thing doesn't make sense -- love never does. But you realize that you are a different and stronger person for having gone through it. It doesn't mean it was worth it. But having found new parts of yourself -- or having generated new parts of yourself -- you've gained something inside that can't ever be taken away; something that will be with you, and only you, for the rest of your life.

This novel amazed me. Graham Greene pulls all this off brilliantly, with emotions toyed and pulled at; with life affirming sentences and quotes on just about every page. He gave me some of the most beautiful and articulate writing I've ever witnessed. It’s hard to imagine how another book could affect my emotions, could hit me in the heart, the way this did. To feel that I'm not the only one; to have it conveyed to me so perfectly -- through me -- was amazing.

When I finished this I had a tingle running up and down my spine. Light fireworks were in my stomach. My head was a happy buzz. My shoulders were so light they had no weight. My mostly numb, yet slightly tickly legs, tripped me up as I hopped from my reading chair to get to my bed, where I just laid there, thinking for an hour, while feeling amazing and transcendent.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Note : every possible plot spoiler included here... but I don't care. Let's go.


So let me get this right. This miserable sourpuss atheistic type author guy Maurice meets this hot slutty (their word) woman Sarah who is married to England’s most boring civil servant Henry. They have a full on steamy affair right under Henry’s nose for four years and are very happy, except Maurice gives the impression that even when he’s happy he’s miserable. Like Morrissey. Similar name. Anyway, it’s World War 2 and there’s a big air raid and the guy goes downstairs to check on the cat or something and WHAM a great big German missile hits the building and a door falls on him. Sarah runs downstairs and sees his arm sticking out and thinks he’s dead. She runs back upstairs and prays to God. So far so reasonable. But actually she doesn’t believe in God. Well, people do strange stuff when they think their true love is dead under a door. She says if God makes Maurice not be dead then she will a) believe in God and b) give up Maurice. So when he wanders into her room all covered with dust and saying wow I just got hit by a door, I thought I was a goner but I just got a headache, how about that, she immediately thinks that God did it. She instantly takes it for a Miracle and not just a near-miss. And that’s the last she sees of him, she cuts him off without a word of explanation, thus plunging them both into suicidal despair. (What she says is “Love doesn’t end just because we don’t see each other.” Well, maybe, but shagging surely does.)
(Sample quote from Maurice after Sarah dumps him :

I thought : hating Sarah is only loving Sarah and hating myself is only loving myself.

Yes, it’s psychobabble 20 years before the term was invented. )

I suppose Sarah thinks that if she breaks the promise to God not to see him, then God will smite him completely dead with another door or handy piece of furniture. But this is not explained.

But hey, this was a promise made under duress. And anyway, if she just takes a moment to think, she will surely realise that during any air raid on London in the War, and any air raid anywhere at any time, many people will have prayed to the God they actually believed in that their loved ones would not die and many people will then have found their loved ones had died in horror and agony nevertheless. And some like her would find their loved ones had survived. So where’s the logic in that? Well, there isn’t any. It’s just human nature. Unless we can conjecture that God sits there saying oh, that’s a good prayer, very well expressed, very sincere, I’ll answer that one. But those prayers are rubbish, cliché ridden, boring, really very bad, so those loved ones will have to fry.

So I figured that this dame was not at the front of the queue when they were handing out brains.

Actually, all these reasonable points are made by a Rational Atheist character who she goes to see to try to get him to argue her out of this insane piece of magical thinking. Oh the vow, the vow to the non-existent God! But it doesn’t work : “his fanaticism fixed the superstition deeper”. By the way, the Rational Atheist has a big Facial Disfigurement, which has Blighted his Life. I think this is some kind of symbol.

Then we get Sarah’s diary and the full horror of her mind is laid bare. She loves Maurice, no, actually, she hates him. No, she loves him. But she hates God. No, she doesn’t believe in him. Oh wait, she loves God, who she doesn’t believe in. And she thinks she’s a Catholic (no other varieties are available in Graham Greene’s universe – Methodism or Zoroastrianism don’t get a look in). She thinks she might be a Catholic but she doesn’t believe! Hold the phone, yes she does. God! No God! Oh the pain! The pain! Love, hate, hate, love, belief, maybe – wah wah wah. Wah Wah.

It becomes really tiresome.

Sample diary quote:

How good You (=God) are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain…. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain…

So eventually this majorly troubled woman ends up saying “I’ve caught belief like a disease” and then dies.

I see that many people think The End of the Affair is a very beautiful meditation on love and faith but it seemed to me as if it was presenting religious faith as if it’s something lying in wait to trap the mentally exhausted person at their lowest point. Really quite nasty. If that was the end of The End of the Affair I could have been okay with this novel, and tried to overlook the tedious love-hate-pain-God loop tape playing throughout, but uh-oh, Greene gives his tortured tale a totally tendentious twist right at the end, where the Rational Atheist is CURED of his facial disfigurement because he snipped off a lock of the hair of the dead Sarah and slept on it. Now really, Mr Greene, pull the other one. It’s got bells on.

Conclusion: a mixed-up mess that doesn’t work on any level which inexplicably gets included in 100 Best Novels lists, proving, once again, yes, I’m on the wrong planet.

[Adina ( not enough time ) · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity. The words of human love have been used by the saints to describe their vision of God, and so, I suppose, we might use the terms of prayer, meditation, contemplation to explain the intensity of the love we feel for a woman. We too surrender memory, intellect, intelligence, and we too experience the deprivation, the noche oscura, and sometimes as a reward a kind of peace. The act of love itself has been described as the little death, and lovers sometimes experience too the little peace. ”

I am terribly late with this review but it wasn’t my fault. One of my colleagues borrowed my book before I got the chance to transcribe the quotes I chose and I had to wait until he brought it back.

The End of the Affair is part of Greene’s Catholic series. I bought it before I found out about this tiny but significant detail and I started this with dread. I was expecting some kind of religious preach but it wasn’t the case, fortunately. The author struggled all his life with the dilemma of God’s existence and he projected his doubts on the narrators of some of his novels. As such, the novel, among other things, becomes a meditation on the probability of God’s existence.

The first part of the novel is more profane and describes, as you can guess, the end of an affair between a famous writer, Maurice Bendrix and the wife of a civil servant, Sarah. In the 2nd part we find out more about the reasons behind the sudden ending and the story becomes more of a discussion about God.

"Man made God in his own image, so it’s natural he should love him. You know those distorting mirrors at fairs. Man’s made a beautifying mirror too in which he sees himself lovely and powerful and just and wise. It’s his idea of himself. He recognizes himself easier than in the distorting mirror which only makes him laugh, but how he loves himself in the other."

The story is not linear, it jumps back and forth in time. We learn how the love story begun, how it was consumed by passion and jealously and how it abruptly ended with a betrayal from Sarah. We get to also find out her point of view, beautifully introduced by her journal.

I would have been annoyed and taken aback by the religious talk weren’t for Greene’s amazing talent for words. Just as in The Quiet American, the author’s prose is superb, I could probably quote here half of the novel and I would still miss some beautiful lines.

“I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boogle at a personal Devil. I have known so intimately the way that demon works in my imagination. No statement that Sarah ever made was proof against his cunning doubts, though he would usually wait till she gone to utter them . He would prompt our quarrels long before they occurred: he was not Sarah’s enemy so much as the enemy of love, and isn’t that what the devil is supposed to be. I can imagine that if there existed a God who loved, the devil would be driven to destroy even the weakest, the most faulty imitation of that love. Wouldn’t he be afraid that the habit of love might grow, and wouldn’t he try to trap us all into being traitors, into helping him extinguish love? If there is a God who uses us and makes his saints out of such material as we are, the devil too may have his ambitions; he may dream of training even such a person as myself, into being his saints, ready with borrowed fanaticism to destroy love wherever we find it. “

The novel was intriguing and beautifully written, as I said, but I wouldn’t recommend it as the first contact with Graham Greene’s work due to its subject. The Quiet American is a much better choice, in my humble opinion.

[Jennifer Masterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars!!! I just spent 3 days being read to by Colin Firth and it was fantastic!!! This is the best narrated audiobook I have ever listened to!!! Now let me say a little about the book itself. I loved it! From the first sentence I was entranced in this complicated love affair. The writing is exquisite! It grabbed my soul and set me on fire!

"This is a record of hate far more than of love." - Maurice Bendrix

"The End of the Affair" is about a writer named Maurice Bendrix. Maurice is a very jealous man. This is quite ironic because he is jealous of Sarah, the married woman he has had an affair with. Sarah ended this affair with Maurice suddenly one day in 1944. Maurice is obsessed with Sarah. He is so obsessed and jealous that he even hires a detective to spy on her. That is all I'm going to say about the book. If I go any further I will get into spoiler territory.

I need to read more classic literature because this book just took my breath away!

Highly recommended to fans of classic literature and/or fans of Colin Firth. To get the full experience listen to the audio version with Mr. Firth's narration!!!

- Just a side note that was brought to my attention. The book does deal with God and Christianity, specifically Catholicism.

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is the story of a jealous man and a jealous God fighting for the soul of a woman who desperately wants to believe in one of them.

oh, and it's a complicated thing, belief.

the relationshippy parts of this book are divine. a woman in an unfulfilling marriage takes a lover, maurice, and puts all of herself into the relationship. maurice, for his part, should perhaps have been called "marcel," because his involvement in the relationship is pure proust. overanalyzing, obsessing, becoming jealous of every past and possible future lover sarah has had or could have, anticipating the end of the relationship so frequently that he is rarely committed to the moment, loving the idea of sarah without understanding her as a woman until everything is over and unobtainable. it is great stuff; a man mourning a relationship he was never even fully involved in. the fool.

"i'd rather be dead or see you dead," i said, "than with another man. i'm not eccentric. that's ordinary human love. ask anybody. they'd all say the same-if they loved at all." i jibed at her. "anyone who loves is jealous."

which is almost intense enough to cover up the fact that he loves her without knowing what she is all about - it is an artist's rendition of love - all movement, no depth.

and poor cuckold henry, loving sarah in his own way, but never giving her the passionate relationship her spirit requires. maurice/marcel sums it up:

and yet he was happier in his unused room simply because it was his: his possession. i thought with bitterness and envy: if one possesses a thing securely, one need never use it.

aagghh. his is a quiet, plodding, consistent love. a loyalty that loves without getting close enough to make a ripple. (and by "ripple," i mean "orgasm," naturally.)

enter God.

who has no business being in a love triangle which eventually becomes a love-octagon, at least. but after promises made in the heat of the moment, and some magical thinking and coincidence He is there and there is no shaking Him, and it gets very complicated.

i am spoiler-tagging this, but it is a quote from the introduction that kills me, and may or may not be a true spoiler: for all the trouble of their relations, the pain of surrendering maurice proves very nearly unendurable: it is as though sarah has punched a hole through her heart, a hole that is both defined by and then filled by god. without the pain she would not need to believe at all, but faith is in greene a form of suffering and sarah has caught it, a disease that somehow gives her the strength she needs not to break her vow.

i feel like i have said too much while saying nothing at all. full disclosure: i wrote a verylong and deeply personal reaction to the book, and then plunked the delete button on purpose for once. and it felt good.

all you need to know is that this book surprised me by being so much better that heart of the matter, and even though i didn't like all the oddly magical bits at the end, i loved the audacity of this book, and the observations he was able to make even hobbled as he was by the unlikeability of his narrator. this book is worth reading for sarah's diary alone.

i groan with loving this book.

come to my blog!

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

O SAISONS! O CHÂTEAUX! QUEL ÂME EST SANS DÉFAUTS?
Arthur Rimbaud

When a wartime climacteric upsets the unthinking romantic tryst of two lovers - the high-minded Sarah, and the popular writer Bendrix - for some strange and unexplained reason right afterward, Sarah walks out on her beloved forever.

And Rimbaud‘s youthful self-revelation of humanity’s hidden sins - that prise de conscience which we call coming of age - is plumbed in dramatically different ways by each one of them.

For Bendrix, it’s a fact of life. One he will do his best to shut out of his mind, as he skims like a myopic sailor over predictable waters of desire and ambition.

Till that day comes when the half-glimpsed rocky shoals of life may sink him forever, God forbid.

Sarah, though, has been in love. Deeply. But it was wrong. Now that it’s over she will risk everything on a Pascalian wager. Come what may.

She has awakened.

For she has seen Bendrix reeling from the blast as she now sees the rest of the world - alas! She has had a Rimbaudian vision of them all, ignorantly strutting astride the sinkhole to the opening Void.

Her fun times with Bendrix now seem like a coloured bubble. She could see her Real Self on the outside in the past, but couldn’t reach it through the barrier.

Now it calls her.

Now she he is on her own, hearing the distant call of the Woodthrush calling through the Fog - and she knows that Out There is her Destiny.

And a Real Life at last!

When we know her Secret, at the end, we will be left speechless.

This has long been my favourite Graham Greene novel - William Faulkner said that it is his masterpiece.

It is Greene’s most Personal novel, as he said.

He LIVED IT.

DON’T BE SATISFIED WITH THE FILM - READ IT!

Five HUGE Stars.

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contains SPOILERS

"This is a record of hate far more than of love," writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair, and it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles.

Now, a year after Sarah's death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of his passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to love-hate. At first, he believes he hates Sarah and her husband, Henry. Yet as he delves deeper into his emotional outlook, Bendrix's hatred shifts to the God he feels has broken his life, but whose existence he at last comes to recognize.”



The story is told in kind of (I’ll make up a phrase here) multiple retrospectives. We know at the start of the book that Sarah has died, but she ended the affair two years before for, let’s say religious reasons. So, as he narrates the story to the reader, Bendrix is at times going back to her death, or back to their affair and the start of it, six years ago, or back to when she broke off the affair, two years ago.

The End of the Affair is one of Greene’s four ‘Catholic novels.’ The others are Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter. I’ve read all four and I would say this is his ‘most Catholic novel,’ although Graham didn’t like to be referred to as a Catholic novelist. (Although he met with the Pope who told him, basically, keep doing what you’re doing.)

Catholic or not, this is certainly a novel about God, specifically, belief in God. I had to add a God shelf to my reviews. Bendrix, an atheist, is so much in love with Sarah, and so traumatized by her ending the affair, and then by her death, that he hates God for bringing these tragedies about. But wait! How can you hate a God you don’t believe in?

He can’t admit that he might be wrong, so he deliberately tries to stop hating God. And yet he feels Sarah is somehow still ‘there.’ He feels he can’t get involved with other women because she would know he is being unfaithful to her. But wait! If Sarah is still around, ‘up there somewhere…’ what does that mean about a God?

And then we have some mysterious happenings. Miracles? No, Bendrix says, coincidences. Catholic issues also rise to the surface when Bendrix argues with her husband over the funeral. Priest or no priest? Burial or cremation?

Their affair started in 1939, so the war and the London blitz play an important role in the story. Bendrix is a writer. He’s successful enough that he can just about live on his earnings. There’s enough about writing and how all this trauma impacts his writing that I added this book to my ‘writing’ shelf too.

After Sarah’s death Bendrix loses interest in writing. “… when Sarah left me, I recognized my work for what it was - as unimportant a drug as cigarettes to get one through the weeks and years. If we are extinguished by death, as I still try to believe, what point is there in leaving some books behind any more than bottles, clothes or cheap jewelry?”

Henry, Sarah’s husband is characterized as a boring civil servant. He has no friends and turns to Bendrix in desperation, naively telling him, in effect, ‘I think my wife is having an affair.’ A private detective is hired, adding complexities to the plot.

Bendrix is so in love that he suffers made-up jealousies and so fears eventually falling out of love, that it partially destroys his love. “We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we known more unhappiness.”

Sarah suffers her own convolutions of logic. She comes to believe that you can still be in love with someone even though you choose not to see or interact with them. Why can’t Bendrix feel the same way? “People go on loving God, don’t they, all their lives without seeing Him?”

There’s a lot of good writing. I liked this summary “St. Augustine asked where time came from. He said it came out of the future which didn't exist yet, into the present that had no duration, and went into the past which had ceased to exist.”

And here’s a good metaphor about conversation with a dull priest invited to dinner: “He had very limited small talk, and his answers fell like trees across the road.”



Greene is a great writer – good writing, excellent storytelling and always serious philosophical issues. I just read and reviewed The Quiet American about the Vietnam War, and I decided that was so well done that I would re-read this book that I read many years ago. Greene or his books frequently appears on various lists of “The One Hundred Best…”

Graham Greene is one of my favorite authors and I have read seven or eight of his novels. Below are links to my reviews of other novels of his:

The Quiet American (set in Vietnam)

The Third Man

Brighton Rock

The Power and the Glory (set in Mexico)

The Comedians (set in Haiti)

The Heart of the Matter (set in British West Africa)

Top photo of London in WW II from reddeerplayers.com
The author from slate.com

[Margaret M · Rating 4 out of 5]

“What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could, I would write with love, but if I could write with love, I would be another man. I would never have lost love.”

Love in all its splendour, obsession in all its madness, and regret in all its solemnity is what we have at this end of this affair. I know books divide opinions but never before has a book divided my own opinion this much – yes that’s a first and straight into why.

The writing is stunning and when well written this subject matter often brings its intriguing combination of drama and tragedy, but then the ‘religion’ threads / reflections in this book felt contradictory and over written.

So, 5/5 for the stunning writing, 5/5 for the story, 1/5 for the authors battles with religious piety and conscience. This is incredibly thought provoking but not always in a good way because this is about love, anger, resentment, and obsession, which to me highlighted a level of hypocrisy in the author himself – eek.

Why do I say this about a well known author, a master of his trade? Because he is the adulterer in the story. He is writing about himself and his own affair with a married woman and then curses God for taking away the object of his obsession. It was a bit of a challenge feeling empathy for this man, although I did feel sympathy for the many hearts this book represents, and also some was reserved for this broken man.

The Story of this Affair

The story is about an affair between Maurice Bendrix, the author in the book (and also the real author Graham Greene), and Sarah Miles, who is married to the couple’s friend Henry Miles.

The indulgent, prohibited and sometimes brazen affair between Sarah and Maurice ends abruptly, when Sarah breaks off contact from Bendrix with little explanation. Obsessed with the only woman he has ever loved, Bendrix begins work with a private investigator to uncover the new object of Sarah’s desire. However, it is only after Sarah falls ill and Bendrix is presented with the opportunity to read her diary, that he comes to appreciate that this third man is not another lover but ‘God’. A symbol of Bendrix’s hate and Sarah’s guilt.

The story becomes less of a story and more of an exploration of love and how desire, obsession and lust conflicts with religious piety and devotion. Whether you believe this was cause or excuse, for the end of the affair is entirely up to you as the reader.

Review and Comments

On one side I thought this was one of the most evocative, raw and sobering portrayals of lost love I have ever read. On the other, it was at times an indulgent self-pitying monologue of one man who lashed out at God for an affair – that according to his religion should have been off limits in the first place. This is what happens when an author controversially puts themselves at the heart of the story.

Religion aside, it was incredibly brave and self-effacing for an author to write such a personally inspired story, and to portray himself as the ‘loser’ in this contest over one woman’s affections and love. For large parts of this book, I could feel the heartache and sense of loss which made this Bendrix / Greene’s story painful, deeply moving, and dramatic.

The author sharing his own insecurity was one of the most touching and agonising moments of this story when he acknowledges his own weaknesses, with comments like... “Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.” because this man knew his obsession would destroy the relationship he had, even if God didn't!!!.

In my quest to acquaint myself with less comfortable and unfamiliar topics, I sought this one out. I knew it would stir my emotions and like I said at the beginning of this review, this book divided my own opinion, more than I expected.

Glad I read it? – yes absolutely and I will read again because I want to see if I can experience something different the next time I indulge in this evocative story of one man’s lost love and now obsession. A love that was tarnished by insecurity and doubts that poisoned the trust between these lovers and then a man who looked to God not for answers but to blame.

Beautifully written, but also sad and gorgeous, raw but also sensual, thought provoking, evocative, and painful.

[Fabian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the less than ten novels in the universe which can conceivably be called PERFECT* (that is, without a single flaw, with so much mastery over the daunting literary terrain that it leaves the reader panting, gives him goose bumps, makes him believe in the sphere of art all over again)—two of them undoubtedly are written by Graham Greene. I have lionized “The Quiet American” before. Now it’s “The End of the Affair” which left me wondering—why isn’t Graham Greene more widely read? The yarn told is truly a cause for heartache: the themes of adultery & death, and above all, religion, are uber-heavy but with great craft Greene manages to make them accessible to his flabbergasted readership (of which, as I’ve said, there must be more!). The lovers fall in love sharing a plate of onions… no poetry escapes this guy, unarguably the BEST WRITER OF THE 20TH CENTURY.

*Others? “Gone With the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell, “A Pale View of Hills” by Kazuo Ishiguro, “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides, "Blonde" by Joyce Carol Oates, “The Human Stain” by Philip Roth… the list does go on.

[Julie G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update 11/11/2017: On this, my third experience of Graham Greene's masterpiece, I chose the audiobook, narrated by Colin Firth. . . and I just want to say to all fellow citizens of our beautiful Planet Earth:
I'm sorry.
I'm truly, truly sorry.
I'm sorry I was flippant with fossil fuels.
I'm sorry that I was erroneous with my emissions.
I'm sorry that I drove my car longer and slower than necessary.
I'm sorry that I took the long way home.

It turns out, in listening to this audiobook of The End of the Affair, I found myself unable resist the indomitable combination of Mr. Darcy's (oops, I mean Mr. Firth's) voice and Mr. Greene's words.

To be frank,
I swerved.
I swore.
I swooned.


Original review:
Graham Greene writes like C.S. Lewis on crack, like Penelope Lively minus the incest. And, at the same time, he writes like no one.

Greene makes the 1950s seem the modern day, and bipolarity a gift we all wish to have. He stirs the pot, turns all of your ideology out through your ear, and stabs you right in the jugular as he inquires if you'd care to try the chocolate mousse?

If you like fluff, or if you read "summer reads" all year through, this is not the book for you. Not-the-book-for-you.

But, if you are willing to sacrifice a few fingernails, parts of an eyebrow, and a crying jag or two, this book might be for you. Might-be-for-you.

I'm going to stay in the fetal position and read it all over again.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not only committing to the five stars for this review, I wish I could give it more. To say it deserves it would be rather an understatement. Reading the book was actually one of those physically memorable experiences: curling up in a ball with it, crouched over it reading behind piles of work I should have been doing, completely zoning out the world around me until it was forced to my attention, not to mention the actual physical pain I felt at the beauty of some of the language employed. Greene's writing here is just absolutely astounding. I cannot emphasize that enough. It is an obsessive love he writes of, obstensibly. That's what the back cover and the short summaries would have us believe that this book is about. But that is not all this book is about. Not even close.

Greene writes about hatred, the nature of belief, the nature of God and what it means to believe in Him, the physical and emotional experience of love, the effects that that love can have on our lives.... and blends it all together so that we see that none of those things can be seperated. This is one of three novels in his "Catholic" trilogy, and the love of and need for God is as intrinsic as the love and need for our soulmates in life. Everything in the end is about God, but through love and hate and the deepest emotions that can be written out from our core. Greene manages to convey emotions and ways of thinking about life and love that we have all felt, but in such a beautifully done way perhaps we could never quite express what it meant ourselves. There were phrases in the book that brought back vivid, intense flashes out of my own experiences, little poignant moments that exactly fit just some random little sentence inserted into a two page rant. That happened over and over again. If I did such things to my books, I would have paragraphs highlighted on every page.

Many times during the book a sort of stream of consciousness is evident in the narration where it is unclear whether the narrator is expressing his thoughts or those of his lover's, whether his thoughts are now or in the past, or whether he can really tell himself which it is. I found that device to be very powerful, showing the effect that even the memory of great events can have upon us, and how visceral the feelings can be even all these years later. Greene is also not afraid to lay his characters bare, perhaps get them on our bad side, to show them in all their ugliness and pettiness- which makes them all the more real. It is how we all act in love and in times of desperation and need. This was so much better done than Heart of the Matter, where I think Greene really tries to keep the reader at more of a distance. That was a mistake. /This/ is a book that gets one thinking about God and love and what it's all about. One has to get at the reader's core before such basic beliefs can really be brought out to be questioned and beaten. And the author won't do that without first going there himself through his characters and his deeply felt, naked writing.

Anyway... possibly the best treatise on love and God I've ever read, and certainly the one that will stay with me the longest. Those were just some random thoughts that came to me upon finishing it, but I hope it is enough that someone else will read it. It's an experience that everyone should have.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ruh roh.

Sorry, Ben. And Kelly. And karen. This book really did not do it for me. In fact, that is kind of an understatement; my two-star rating is generous in that I actually feel sort of bad for disliking it as much as I did. I know it hits certain people on an emotional, gut-deep level and I am not arrogant enough (I am arrogant, just not arrogant enough) to universally proclaim its lack of literary value. My point is that I’ve often had people come onto my reviews and say, “Oh, thanks for letting me know this book sucks. Now I can take it off my shelves.” Don’t do that! Don’t not read this book on account of this review. It is only a reflection of this novel’s impact on me, and I am just one person. And a relatively unimportant one, at that.

Okay, so here is why this book sucks. First of all, I was genuinely liking it at the beginning. It is absolutely well written, and I enjoyed the narrator’s slow reveal of his history with Sarah and Henry. I was all geared up to hate the narrator, too, who I thought was going to be some detestable marriage violator. (It can be a lot of fun hating awful characters, can’t it?) Except as I continued reading, I came to realize that we, the reader, are perhaps not meant to hate Bendrix at all. In fact, I think we are being asked to identify with him, possibly, which sucks for me because I can’t. I don’t. So thanks, Mr. Greene, for taking the fun out of that angle.

And then the book shifts to Sarah’s journal entries, at which point everything for me came to a grinding, screeching halt. Sarah is by far the lamest character ever created. Her internal struggle—the struggle that lies at the center of the novel’s plot—is one that I could in no way relate to. It is during the description of this struggle that the novel takes a turn into an awkward territory of faith and the challenges presented on account of that faith (or lack thereof), and it was simply a huge turnoff for me. I’ve already returned this book to the library so I can’t quote it directly, but certain passages, paraphrased, rang very shallow to me, like, “my love for her refused to accept her death, whereas my hatred for her had full faith in it.” Oh, for fuck’s sake, give me a break. Really?

Anyway, I am super sorry I did not love this book. The only character I liked was Henry and I got the suspicious feeling I was supposed to dislike him, so it was just an all around mismatch for me. But I will try to do better next time.

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

UNA STORIA NON HA NÉ PRINCIPIO NÉ FINE


I film tratti dal romanzo sono due, questo è il più recente (1999), con Julianne Moore, che per questo ruolo fu candidata all’Oscar, e Ralph Fiennes. Stephen Rea è il marito di lei.

L’avventura che finisce non è un evento, una vicenda o una peripezia: si tratta di un’avventura sentimentale, una storia d’amore. Più precisamente, di una relazione extraconiugale che finisce. La traduzione italiana del titolo potrebbe indurre all’equivoco.

Un racconto non ha né principio né fine: si sceglie arbitrariamente un certo momento dell’esperienza dal quale guardare indietro, o dal quale guardare in avanti. Dico “si sceglie”, con l’orgoglio generico di uno scrittore professionista il quale – se e in quanto è stato seriamente notato – è stato lodato per la sua abilità tecnica; ma sono poi veramente io che di mia volontà propria ho scelto quella nera e umida sera di gennaio sul Common del 1946, e lo spettacolo di quell’Henry Miles curvo a schermirsi contro i vasti rovesci della pioggia ; o sono state queste immagini a scegliere me? È opportuno, è corretto, stando alle regole della mia professione, cominciare proprio da lì; ma se avessi allora creduto in un Dio, avrei anche potuto credere in una mano che mi tirasse per il gomito, suggerendomi: “Digli una parola, non ti ha ancora veduto.


La regia è del bravo Neil Jordan. Il film è elegante, ma mi è sembrato mancasse di qualcosa, forse la passione: la chimica tra i due attori non è ad alti livelli.

Il narratore protagonista - o co-protagonista, visto che la donna ha un ruolo centrale, e anche il di lei marito, quell’Henry Miles citato qui sopra, non è figura marginale – è uno scrittore: ed è per questo che ‘flirta’ nell’incipit col mestiere di scrivere, con il metodo di raccontare.
E se Maurice Bendrix, questo scrittore omodiegetico, ci dice “se avessi allora creduto in un Dio”, il suo creatore Graham Greene si era da un quarto di secolo con fervore convertito alla religione cattolica: e quindi, Greene credeva eccome nel dio cattolico. Ma, a spingere Sarah a quella infausta promessa non è stato tanto il senso di colpa, quanto il grande amore per Maurice: o dio salvalo, risparmialo, lascialo vivere, e io in cambio rinuncerò a lui, proprio a lui che amo più di me stessa (è noto che dio ami questo genere di sacrificio, e prediliga il sacrificio in genere. Non certo per spirito burlone).


il primo film è diretto da Edward Dmytryk nel 1955 e i due protagonisti sono Deborah Kerr e Van Johnson.

E a quel dio credeva molto Sarah, la moglie di Henry Miles, l’amante di Maurice. Ci credeva così tanto che durante uno dei loro incontri clandestini, nel mezzo di un bombardamento aereo (Seconda Guerra Mondiale), la stanza in cui s’incontrano viene colpita, Maurice sviene e sembra morto: lei, Sarah, fa un voto a dio, e promette che se lui, dio, salva l’altro lui, Maurice, lei smetterà di vederlo, interromperà, anzi chiuderà l’avventura extraconiugale. Della quale, essendo molto religiosa, e/o credente, Sarah è consapevole che non si tratti di “cosa buona e giusta”, tutt’altro: di fronte alla possibile morte di lui, il senso di colpa la dilania tanto quanto il dolore per la perdita.


Stephen Rea e Ralph Fiennes sotto la pioggia come da incipit del romanzo.

Fino a qui siamo su un solco già noto.
Fino a qui nel mio riassunto: perché invece, come si intuisce dall’incipit riportato in alto, Greene cambia da subito le regole del gioco e le carte in tavola.
Mi spiego meglio: la guerra è finita, sono passati anni, tutti e tre sono sopravvissuti, incluso Maurice – Sarah ha tenuto fede al suo fioretto e dal giorno di quella bomba non lo vede né frequenta più.
Il romanzo prende avvio dal giorno in cui Maurice per caso rivede Henry, che non ha mai saputo della sua “avventura” con Sarah: l’uomo gli confida di temere che sua moglie lo stia tradendo, abbia una relazione extraconiugale.
A questo punto, il vero geloso diventa Maurice, l’ex amante, che arriva a ingaggiare un detective per far pedinare Sarah e scoprire chi sia il suo nuovo amante. E magari scoprire perché lei quel giorno l’abbia eliminato di netto dalla sua vita.
Non che a questo punto ci sia chissà quale mistero giallo da non rivelare: ma io comunque mi fermo, non racconto altro.

Questo è uno dei grandi romanzi di Greene: io l’ho divorato, iniziato e finito nel corso di una notte. Una delle sue grandi storie, che smuovono emozioni, che creano attesa. La storia di un amore, di un grande amore: che nonostante il diabolico intervento divino, rimane avvincente e appassionante.

[Lizzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can a reader feel as though they have a split personality? I doubted myself while reading The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. I loved it and hated it. At times I thought it unquestionably deserved five stars; later I found myself suffering so much that I wanted to give it only two. It's not fair to suffer for nothing—I had to make someone pay for it!

Don't try to understand me; I don't understand myself. Such beautiful passages about love would suddenly become passages about jealousy, resentment, and despair, and I felt almost betrayed by the novel itself.

At its heart, The End of the Affair tells the story of Maurice Bendrix, a writer who falls passionately in love with Sarah, the wife of a British civil servant, during the Blitz in London. Their affair is intense, consuming, and seemingly unstoppable until Sarah abruptly ends it without explanation. Unable to understand why, Bendrix's love gradually gives way to bitterness and an obsessive jealousy that consumes him.

I could sympathize completely with Bendrix. Being abandoned without any explanation while still deeply in love is a torment easy to imagine. Sarah, however, was much harder for me to understand. How could someone Greene convinces us loves so deeply suddenly renounce that love for a God she herself often struggles to believe in? My own beliefs are beside the point, so forgive me if I fail to understand her completely. Bendrix's pain, however, I recognized immediately. I knew my own love could easily turn into hatred after such a betrayal. Whether I would go to the same lengths he does to justify myself, I honestly cannot say—but I cannot confidently say I wouldn't.

Greene writes with such extraordinary beauty that even while I resisted the novel, I found myself surrendering to his prose. Few writers have described the paradox of happiness and suffering more memorably:

"The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence... But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity."

The novel begins after the affair has already ended and unfolds through Bendrix's recollections. Greene moves effortlessly between past and present, gradually revealing Sarah's reasons through her diary. What first appears to be a story about love and betrayal slowly becomes something far more profound: a meditation on faith, suffering, sacrifice, and the mysterious ways in which love can transform itself.
Greene announces his intentions from the very beginning:

"When I began to write I said this was a story of hatred..."
But is it really? Like Bendrix, I found myself unable to answer that question.

Perhaps my expectations made things even harder. I had already seen the film adaptation before reading the novel, and expectations can be dangerous companions. They make us biased before we've even turned the first page.

The opening chapter is magnificent. Bendrix unexpectedly meets Henry in the rain, accompanies him home, and soon Sarah returns, soaked from the weather. Henry's ordinary concern for his wife suddenly acquires an almost prophetic weight. From that moment Greene establishes an atmosphere of quiet inevitability that never leaves the novel.

As Sarah's own spiritual struggle unfolds, the novel gradually becomes not only a story about two lovers but also a profound discussion of God, faith, doubt, and sacrifice. I often found myself resisting the direction Greene was taking, wanting the story to remain simply about human love. Like Bendrix, I wanted to protest: not this way.

Yet Greene slowly conquered me.
Perhaps no sentence affected me more than this one:

"What a fool I had been during three years to imagine that in any way I had possessed her. We are possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves."

I could not agree more.
Sarah herself expresses the impossible conflict at the heart of the novel with heartbreaking simplicity:

"People go on loving God, don't they, all their lives without seeing him?"

By the end, Bendrix has exchanged his hatred of Sarah for anger directed at God Himself. His final prayer perfectly captures both exhaustion and defeat:

"O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough. I'm too tired and old to learn to love. Leave me alone forever."

A novel written with such passion and such majesty, examining love, obsession, hatred, and faith with such depth, almost transcends judgment. It carries the reader through moments of wonder and moments of profound sadness, asking difficult questions without pretending to offer easy answers.
Nevertheless, despite all its beauty, I am rating The End of the Affair four stars. That is the only revenge I can take for the emotional torture Greene put me through. Worse still, I suffered all over again while trying to write this review.

It probably deserves five stars. I am not perfect, after all. But I reserve the right to change my mind, and perhaps, after a future rereading, I may finally grant it that last star. Something to look forward to.

[Ines · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this book has been hard to finish, the huge problem is that the writing and therefore the communication with the reader is really slow, verbose and totally mind intricate.
Even in the syntactic level, it's often difficult to understand who the subject is because there are often passages with subtext and anticipations that we will find only in the chapters not yet read.
I find myself very surprised by this writing, because it is not the same that I tasted in the "Power and the glory" where is much more direct, linear and above all, easy to understand.
In this story nothing really amazing happens, we are faced with an illegitimate couple, whose woman, Sara, falls madly in love with Mr. Bendrick, a neighbor.
Not everything is simple because the lover is convinced that she has other relationships at the same time and decides, manipulating a kind of consent from her husband, to have her followed by a detective.
The figure of the two men created by Greene is terrible, one is a narcissist of the worst, where even in love the only thing that matters is that he is not screwed or that does not get caught in possible relational pain.
The husband is a" living pudding", Dante Alighieri will call it a "ignavo" ( slothful soul) who doesn’t know how to love or decide anything alone with a certain frown.
The path, or grace, that will lead Sara to leave her lover and to entrust herself totally in a new found Faith in the Catholic Church is very complex. I do not hide the fact that I have had to read many sentences several times, because they are very dense of meaning and logical and philosophical complexity.
Sara understands and realizes that she is a poor adulterous sinner and entrusts her life in this possibility of redemption through some fortuitous knowledge, which though not living the same path, they will help her to continue and to go infuse what her heart yearns for, to love Christ and to be loved by him.
Henry and Bendrix, husband and lover of her, who in this half-tragic story will approach and then end up living together after Sara’s death, as two roommates, are nothing more than the living representation of failures, the sins and frailty of man...
Both anchored in the concreteness of materiality and verifiable; it will be precisely love, this love and hatred towards Sara, not measurable and impossible to understand and to measure to make Bendrick begin to ask himself questions about who Sara really was, what she had in the deepest feeling of the heart and why she yearned so much for the embrace of God.
With a tiny step forward, he too will come to open his soul to the possibility of God

PS: this book is really complex, I realize it’s not for everyone... I was going to quit because the male figures were absolutely impossible to bear. The end are only tears ( for me, they have been!)


I really like the cover for the italian version of the book

Caspita che fatica terminare questo libro,. il problema enorme è che la scrittura e quindi la comunicazione con il lettore è veramente lenta, prolissa e totalmente cervellotica..
anche a livello sintattico spesso si fa fatica a capire chi sia il soggetto perchè spesso vi sono passaggi con sottintesi e anticipazioni che ritroveremo solo nei capitoli non ancora letti..
Mi ritrovo molto sorpresa da questa scrittura, perchè non è la stessa che ho assaporato ne " Il potere e la gloria", molto piu diretta, lineare e soprattutto di facile comprensione.
In questa storia non succede niente di veramente sbalorditivo, ci troviamo di fronte ad una coppia illegittima la cui donna, Sara, si innamora perdutamente di Mr. Bendrix, un vicino di casa..
non tutto è semplice perchè l'amante è convintissimo che lei abbia nello stesso momento altre relazioni e decide, manipolando una specie di beneplacito del marito, di farla seguire da un detective..
La figura dei due uomini che ha creato Greene è tremenda, uno è un narcisista dei peggiori, dove anche nell' amore l'unica cosa che conta è che lui non venga fregato o che non rimanga impigliato in possibili strascichi di dolore relazionale..
Il marito è un budino vivente, un " ignavo" che non sa ne amare ne decidere niente da solo con un certo cipiglio.
Il percorso, o grazia, che porterà Sara a lasciare l'amante e ad affidarsi totalmente in una nuova ritrovata Fede nella Chiesa Cattolica è molto complesso. non nascondo che ho dovuto leggere piu' volte molte frasi, perchè densissime di significato e complessità logica e filosofica.
Sara capisce e si rende conto di essere una povera peccatrice adultera e affida la sua vita in questa possibilità di redenzione tramite alcune conoscenze fortuite, che pur non vivendo lo stesso percorso, l'aiuteranno a proseguire e andare infondo a ciò che anela il suo cuore, amare Cristo ed essere amata da lui.
Henry e Bendrix, marito e amante di lei, che in questa storia mezza tragicomica si avvicineranno per finire poi col vivere insieme dopo la morte di Sara, come due coinquilini, non sono altro che la rappresentazione vivente dei fallimenti, peccati e fragilità dell' uomo...
Tutti e due ancorati alla concretezza della materialità e del verificabile; sarà proprio l'amore questo amore e odio verso Sara, non misurabile e impossibile da capire e da misurare a far si che Bendrix inizi a porsi delle domande su chi Sara fosse veramente, cosa aveva nel piu' profondo sentire del cuore e perchè anelasse così tanto all'abbraccio di dio.
Con un minuscolo passo avanti, arriverà anche lui ad aprire la sua anima alla possibilità di Dio

PS: questo libro è veramente complesso, mi rendo conto che non sia per tutti... stavo per mollare perchè le figure maschili erano assolutamente impossibili da sopportare. il finale è da lacrime ( per me lo è stato

[Georgia Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What happened?" we ask when marriages break up. If it's our own, we may have some answers. If the marriage is a friend's, it can be a total shock. "They were great together. So in love. Why, I never thought in a million years I'd ever see the day when . . . "

Affairs are different. They mostly end as they begin, silently, unknown to anyone. They cook away or cool on their own. Affairs are pots of food which few share with others. Delectable or burnt or bad, their contents stay private. Just as no one toasts the happiness of adulterers, offers of shoulders to cry upon are in short supply.

So, let's give some slack to Maurice. His affair has come to an end. Worse than that, he's been "ghosted." Sarah hasn't written or called. Not one word. Nothing. Nil since they last made love which coincided with a bomb dropping on the house. The plaster has settled but his heart still whirls in bits. He lashes out when specks lodge in his eyes. He's a writer and used to making stories out of chaos. But he can't string these bits into anything that makes sense. Pissed off? You bet. Wouldn't you be?

And if you could find out what happened to end things, wouldn't you take that chance to heal even if it meant you'd be hurt again?

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love aside, most of the great romantic novels of the 20th century also includes a fair share of both pain and hate, and Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is certainly one of them. I'd say, it's one of the most honest and endearing explorations of love (and adultery) I have read in a long time, and one reason why it works so well is that is does everything so much more openly than similar type novels. But I found it's not without it's faults, albeit only small niggles, as Greene employs a mix of flashback, stream-of consciousness and conventional narrative, partly based on diary entries. Greene takes the basic conventions of romantic fiction but he also goes about transcending genre, which pushed this up into a different class from your bog-standard love story.

Set in London during the blitz the novel is centred around a sort of anti-hero, the jealous, calculating and malicious Maurice Bendrix, a second-rank novelist, who makes the acquaintance of his neighbour’s wife, Sarah, and of course they fall in love. But it is an affair tortured by his envy towards the husband Henry, and her overwhelming guilt, and after Bendrix is nearly killed by a bomb blast, her involvement in extramarital activity with him becomes too much to bear. After a couple of years pass, Henry, who is ignorant of the affair, approaches Maurice about his wife’s infidelity with another man, and the intrigue of the narrative is heightened when a private detective starts to investigate.

I had already seen the Ralph Fiennes / Julianne Moore film adaptation, which was pretty good, but the novel is far superior, as Greene, who was arguably at his peak when he wrote this, goes to greater depths to enlarge the reader's understanding of love and it's various subdivisions, of which most get explored. I found myself going up and down like a yo-yo when it came to how I felt towards the three main characters, myself being torn by the love/hate interplay between them. With this being a meticulously British novel, it comes as no surprise we get the rain lashing down, but through the dreary weather, pain and unpleasantness, the novel for me will be remembered for the brief moments of pure love and passion.

[Bionic Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

A contemporary novel entitled The End of the Affair would be a very different book. But this is not a contemporary novel; it dates from 1951. It is set in Clapham, London, partly during the Blitz of World War II, and partly later in 1946, and since it is written by Graham Greene "the affair" covers a far wider scope than the reader might expect. It dates from what are considered to be the author's best years, the age of postwar austerity, keying in to the readers of the time's recent vivid memories, and blurring the line slightly between his serious novels and a kind of entertainment. Evelyn Waugh’s review of 1951 said,

“Mr Greene has chosen another contemporary form, domestic, romantic drama of the type of 'Brief Encounter', and has transformed that in his own inimitable way”

adding that the story is “a singularly beautiful and moving one”.

The End of the Affair is clearly inspired both in title and content by conventional romantic fiction, but it transcends the genre. Obsessive jealousy is certainly a major theme, but personal spiritual beliefs are dissected too.

The novel starts in 1946, with the narrator, Maurice Bendrix, remembering a passionate relationship he had had with Sarah Miles between 1939 and 1944. The end of the affair was unaccountable to him and this has meant that he has dwelled on the reasons ever since. Full of bitterness, he now maintains that the story he is to unfold will be “a record of hate far more than of love.”

Impressing on the reader that he as a writer will choose how much of the story he is about to tell, he views himself to be in control of the story, thereby revealing his control of the truth as he sees it.

We gain an impression of this man as he writes his thoughts, and it is not at all the impression we feel Bendrix himself would wish us to get. Bendrix’s point of view is ironic, which makes for an entertaining read. He tells the story of his affair convincingly, persuading us that he is aware of his own pain, suffering, and misery. He purports to be aware of his shameful behaviour, but this feels rather glib. This self-awareness does have a modern feel, for it implies that the narrator might be leading himself through some kind of ritual of acceptance.

We soon deduce that behind all the dissembling, Maurice Bendrix, lame since a childhood illness, is arrogant and smug; a selfish, immature, insensitive, and cynical man. He met Sarah in a calculated way, befriending her purely to gain access to her husband Henry Miles, whom he wanted to use as background research for a novel he wanted to write. He had chosen Henry quite deliberately, amusing himself in a typically superior fashion, cynically viewing Henry as rather boring and predicable civil servant, and casually seducing his wife (although the two of them did then find themselves overwhelmingly in love). The final clue to the reader that Bendrix may be an unreliable narrator, is his own assessment of his writing skills. He is quite well known, and manages to make a living by writing novels, but he reports that he has never become truly great in the eyes of critics because they cannot understand his work properly, saying it was, "the work of a craftman", and without passion.

Graham Greene has cleverly drawn a character who is intelligent and skilled, but conveys to us that this man believes he can get what he wants and use people as puppets merely through manipulation and charm. Bendrix feels no compunction as he belittles people, making them embarrassed, and even attempting to make the reader complicit in this, seeing nothing unethical in his behaviour. He uses his intellectual and verbal skills both as defence mechanisms, and also weapons for attacking those less intelligent than himself.

Nevertheless, we are conflicted. We enjoy the charm of the man, and are carried along by his account, trying to piece together our own view of the situation. For the first two fifths of the book, we only have Bendrix's own account of the story, which we have to interpret as we think. He claims to hate both Henry Miles, his wife, Sarah, and a God in whom he does not believe, but this is very unconvincing to us. Graham Greene subtly gives us a thorough grasp of Bendrix's personality, so that we can filter his "truth" through what we know of his personality, and thus learn the probable truth, or at least part of it.

The story begins when Bendix accidentally meets Henry crossing the street one dark and rainy night. Henry asks Bendrix initially to go to a bar to get out of the rain, and then to go home with him, saying that he is worried about his wife, Sarah. He confides that he fears Sarah might be having an affair. Of course there is a supreme irony in this, and it neatly satisfies Bendrix's vanity in having Henry's boundless naivity confirmed. In his eyes, Henry had been a dupe when he and Sarah were having an affair, and he is now tempted to make further use of Henry for his own ends, to discover why Sarah so abruptly broke off the affair, without giving a reason. It also proves intriguing to us as the readers. We too want to know what happened, and whether Sarah is the person Bendrix describes.

There is talk of hiring a private investigator to watch Sarah, and Bendrix cannot resist offering to do it for Henry, as a "friend". The reader understands that both men are jealous, Bendrix intensely so. After a while during the conversation, Sarah comes in drenched to the skin. For the reader, the alarm bells ring at this point, and part of the denouement is strongly telegraphed.

By the start of book two, we are familiar with a new character, someone else for Bendrix to cruelly manipulate whilst showing how clever he is. Alfred Parkis the private investigator, and his young son, whom he is "training", are described in semi-comic terms, although the story itself is rather poignant. Despite his shortcomings and disadvantages, Parkis’s reports to Bendrix, his genuine like of and respect for all concerned, and his solicitous care for his son display far greater sensitivity than Bendrix's own. He is perhaps the most truly moral character in the novel.

The narrative cleverly switches between the present and flashbacks. We learn of a near tragedy back in 1944, involving a V-1 bomb explosion with catastrophic and far-reaching consequences.

Parkis begins a surveillance, and after several reports to Bendrix about Sarah’s repeated meetings with a man, he manages to steal Sarah’s journal. Book 3 is Sarah's diary, which Bendrix reads trying to discover Sarah's true feelings for him and their relationship. In the process, he learns the reason for the end of their affair. This is also a neat device for us to hear the real thoughts of Sarah, without them being filtered though either Bendrix or Henry, which is all we have had so far. The diary is included verbatim, although Bendrix says that he has only selected the relevant parts, and missed out those dealing with routine life, or Sarah's life with Henry. There are long sections about Bendrix and her love for him, and her love for God, and the conflicts she suffers. The reader tends to view this as Sarah's truth, seeing no reason for her to invent or confabulate in her journal. Rather it seems a catharsis, or a way of exploring and coming to terms with her burgeoning spiritual beliefs, which are begining to feel less like superstition than her consciousness of a great and powerful presence. Despite her lifelong disbelief Sarah seems to be beginning to feel the need to believe in God.

The entry about their last day together reveals a bargain or promise which Sarah felt she had made to God. Because of events, Sarah at least partially believed that her prayer had been answered, and felt bound by her duty to keep a vow she had made. From then on she felt an inner conflict, and embarked on deep, painful struggle which she interpreted as a spiritual journey. She desperately wanted to be with Bendrix, but found it impossible to reconcile this with her new beliefs.

"I've caught belief like a disease. I've fallen into belief like I fell in love."

Other characters are introduced, a rationalist atheist, Richard Smythe, and a Catholic priest, Father Crompton. These two characters represent the contrasting directions Sarah could pursue, but each character is seriously flawed. By the end of the novel one has completely renounced his position.

The end of book four marks an event which has been predestined from the start, with much foreshadowing as the novel progressed. What was unexpected though, was at that it should happen at that point, rather than at the end of the novel.

The final section of the book deals with most of the characters' spiritual journeys. Yet again Graham Greene introduces a couple of new minor characters to spark our interest, and these facilitate a slightly more omniscient view. Bendrix is still narrating, but he is a more sober Bendrix, and possibly because of this, a more objective one.

By virtue of one of the new characters, and a belief swing in another, we can analyse the role of superstition in religion. The priest has already confirmed that he does not see this as invalidating the truth of religion, and now we see that although both Bendrix and Sarah have had an antipathy towards it, it may yet be a component in Sarah's final acceptance of faith. Bendrix has spent much of the novel puzzling over Sarah's struggle between faith and doubt. He continually asserts that he has no such doubts, never caring that he hurts people in order to assert his superiority over them. He appears to despise everyone he meets - even professing to despise saint-like Sarah's weakness in the end. He derisively scorns Henry’s blinkered complacency, Father Crompton’s peaceful acceptance, Richard Smythe’s anti-religious zeal, and is even contemptuous of Sarah’s own mother, who superstitiously believes in the value of the secret baptism she gave Sarah when Sarah was two years old. Bendrix knows of Sarah's choice - mirrored by almost all the characters in the novel - to have a Catholic ceremony of burial. Yet obstinately he holds to his scientific view of the world, imposing this on all those around him who want to see the world as evidence of divine will.

This would not appear to be a rationalist view, but it is consistent with Bendrix's character. He suspects the motives of all the people who express their personal choice for Sarah’s funeral. Many of those around him want to believe in a God, and even in miracles. Henry is possibly an exception, too weak and functional to have any passionate belief. Bendrix believes that he alone loved Sarah for who she was, and attempts to persuade the reader that he alone was capable of sharing a mutually fulfilling love with her. Ultimately the story itself is his solace, and in his mind an act of devotion to Sarah. Interestingly, this devotion is to a Sarah of his imagination, and not necessarily the Sarah who existed, just as the others’ acts of devotion were to a God whom they would define by their own various beliefs.

Sarah's view goes through more of a sea change. From her initial erroneous view of her relationship with Bendrix's perfection, she develops a growing consciousness of having been used as a stooge for Bendrix to gain access to Henry. The next stage is to a mutually intense and fulfilling relationship, where there is no imbalance, neither loving the other more.

"How strange too and unfamiliar to think that one had been loved, that one's presence had once had the power to make a difference between happiness and dullness in another's day."

But even this new genuine love is bound by human limitations. Bendrix was jealous, knowing that Sarah had had other affairs, in reaction to Henry's sexual inadequacy, and he imagined subsequent ones. He does not believe that she loves him unreservedly, both physically and spiritually. In fears that the affair will end Bendrix begins a self-destructive hurtling helter-skelter, attempting to hasten it to that end by being bitter and quarrelsome.

"As long as one suffers one lives."

This is a nice parallel to the concept of martydom in Catholicism - a rationalist's inadvertent succumbing to the same human trait, which might be considered a foible. Though hurt, Sarah remains utterly committed to him, saying,

“Love doesn’t end,”

But eventually, Sarah feels that her human loving relationship is essentially corrupted both by Bendrix’s jealousy, and by her own marriage. She sets against this love, the religious love of God, or spirit, praying to the ‘anything that is there’. Sarah’s view, shared by Father Crompton, and ultimately by Smythe, is that human love is innately flawed and therefore impossible, therefore people can only suffer.

Although he had escalated it, Bendrix became tormented by the end of his affair with Sarah, longing to know why she ended the relationship.

“Lies had deserted me, and I felt as lonely as though they had been my only friends.”

For all his protestations of rationality and a scientific outlook, when Bendrix reports talking to Henry, he claims that a demon encouraged him to be deceptive and false in pretending to be Henry's friend in order to find out about Sarah. At various points throughout the novel, Bendrix mentions this "demon", which represents, or perhaps he feels excuses, his hatred and selfishness.

“I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil. I have known so intimately the way that demon works in my imagination.”

Events seem to conspire to a perfect ironic switch, just as the scene in "Romeo and Juliet", where Juliet is not dead, but only in a drugged semblance of it. At the very moment Sarah gains this new spiritual insight, and converts in her heart to Catholicism, Bendrix becomes convinced by her diary that Sarah still loves him, and that only he can offer her real, tangible joy, rather than an abstract kind spiritual happiness. He insists on seeing her, but she leaves the house, running through the cold and sleet to evade him. This twists the knife of irony still further, as Bendrix's pursuit of Sarah towards the end of the book, when she already has pneumonia, endangers her life further and triggers her death eight days later.

The dual tragedy of The End of the Affair, is that Bendrix always discovers the truth too late, and Sarah always keeps her innermost thoughts hidden inside her quiet exterior. It is beautifully ironic that Graham Greene makes Bendrix himself a novelist - but one who shows great ignorance of his own feelings and motivations. Completely baffled by Sarah, his continued misunderstanding of her drives her away and even eventually destroys her.

One interpretation of the ending could be that the shock breaks through Bendrix's self-absorption, beginning a process of making him a better person. He is far more subdued in the fifth book. After Sarah's death, when Parkis's son is cured of appendicitis after being given a book that belonged to her, and the livid disfiguring patch on Smythe's face clears spontaneously, it is Bendix who reports these motifs of Catholicism as possible miracles. He debates having to believe in and love Sarah's God, but resists,

“if you are a saint, it’s not so difficult to be a saint. It’s something He can demand of any of us - leap! But I won’t leap.”

Yet the reader is left with the feeling that he may. Perhaps Graham Greene is indicating here that like Sarah, he has been in purgatory rather than in hell.

By the end, Bendrix and Henry have formed a close relationship, through their shared grief for Sarah. One day walking arm in arm, Henry tells Bendrix how much he looks forward to their walks. Outwardly Bendrix agrees, but inwardly he is telling God that he is tired and old, imploring God - whom he still attempts to claim not to believe in - to leave him alone.

Graham Greene professed a dislike of being labelled a Catholic writer, preferring to be thought of as a writer who happened to be a Catholic. Nevertheless, critics consider The End of the Affair to be the last in his Catholic tetralogy, following "Brighton Rock", "The Power and the Glory", and "The Heart of the Matter". A lot of The End of the Affair is less about a romance, and not even about an obsession, but about a relationship with God, even if this consists in a disbelief and a hatred of God. Perhaps the author believed that Bendrix's way to God was through pain with Bendrix's comment, “As long as one suffers one lives.” It was Sarah who said that God has mercy, “Only it’s such an odd sort of mercy, it sometimes looks like punishment.”

To a reader, particularly a non-religious reader, this approach to a possible dimension of belief is refreshing. At no point does the author invite the reader by implication to be at all judgemental about any religious faith but merely to explore the area. Neither do we judge the characters, although secrets, lies and misunderstandings abound. We merely note Maurice Bendrix's incipient arrogance, Sarah's indecision, and Henry's bland imperturbability. Various aspects of human nature are presented and intertwined.

The End of the Affair is clearly a personal novel. The English edition, is dedicated cryptically, “To C”. But the American edition, is more explicit, “To Catherine with love”. Catherine Walston, the wife of the Labour peer Harry Walston, had been Greene’s mistress for several years, apparently in a deeply troubled relationship. This novel was partly a sad record of their doomed relationship. Graham Greene's biographer wrote,

“It was a love affair of dangerous proportions and one wracked, as the novel is, with Catholic guilt.”

The novel is extraordinarily well written, very nuanced and quite complex, whilst staying very readable. As with most great books the characters do not have to be likeable, for us to engage with them and apart from Parkis perhaps, none of these are. But they are human, and understandable. Having said, at the outset, that “a story has no beginning or end”, Graham Greene uses a mix of flashback, stream-of-consciousness and narrative, including part based on Sarah’s diary, to relate how she prays for a miracle, “catches belief like a disease”, and then subsequently dies. It can thus be seen as a Catholic novel on one level, but equally it can be seen as an essentially human one too, exploring themes of love, obsession and hate, and the wish for something greater than the commonplace - perhaps the presence of a spiritual dimension - in human lives. One critic has said,

"A complex and compact study of the nature of love, hate, desire and loss, Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair" places the most basic human emotions under a microscope."

It is an absorbing and compelling read.

[Samadrita · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm trying very badly not to launch into a full fledged rant against this book as I type this out because rants are rarely, if ever, proper reviews. And I want to pose a rational argument explaining my dislike for this book.
As much as the sexist ramblings of the protagonist and the selfish, irrational actions of the main characters served to irritate me to a great extent, I still reigned in my impatience and held out hope for the narrative till the time I was done with the very last page. But sadly enough, the ending left me not only disappointed but positively fuming.
A man's disfigured cheek becomes healed and near scarless - no not through surgery or any kind of therapy but all thanks to a freaking miracle. Really now?

I always welcome flawed characters in literature because truly what real person is perfect? or even close to being perfect?
Characters are meant to act like morons, do things that defy logic and frustrate us and yet earn our empathy in the end simply by virtue of their being human. But forget empathy, I just did not feel an ounce of anything for the central characters here except some occasional annoyance for abruptly starting one-sided conversations with this entity called 'God'.

As is obvious from the title this is about an affair, a torrid one at that, which ends badly and its subsequent repercussions. But the author just had to drag the much hyped up subject of 'God' into this and translate his love/hate for a woman into his love/hate for 'God'. How his insatiable desire for a woman forced him to confront his own atheistic/agnostic values and come closer to acknowledging the importance of faith.

Which I didn't mind that much either, really.

But how do you look the other way when every other line of a passage has either the word 'God' or 'You' or 'Him' in it and the characters are engaging in interminable monologues with 'Him'? (Please pay attention to how I am deliberately overlooking the crucial debate on God's gender)

'God' is a subject that I am yet to face head on and make my peace with. But my attitude so far has been a little like Haruki Murakami's in Kafka on the Shore -

“If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

I can tolerate a healthy dose of reflections on religion and spirituality, IF it is served with a touch of rationale and has the capacity to appeal to even the staunch non-believer.

Like in a Life of Pi-ish way - nothing life-altering or too preachy but still understandable.

But I hate it when 'God' is shoved right in my face in the form of long, winding passages replete with repetitive rhetorical questions. It's like 'He' is a character in this without being one. A passive, ubiquitous presence which steals everybody's thunder without doing a damned thing.
Was this about the affair or about 'God' or Catholicism? or was it about the author's attempt at coming to terms with the tragedy of his affair by seeking a form of oneness with 'God' and something bigger than life itself?
It's like Greene carelessly threw away bits and pieces of the bigger picture but did not strive towards aiding the reader in stitching them all together. Which is why the book just stopped short of making a much powerful impact.

If I am to take this novel only as a piece of autobiographical writing and a tribute to Greene's affair with one Lady Catherine Walston, then maybe some of my criticism automatically becomes void. But since this is a work of fiction, I think my points of contention are quite valid.

Dear 'God', you do not impress me in the least when characters are citing 'You' as an excuse for their reluctance to behave like logical human beings.

The 2 stars have been awarded to those few points in the narrative where the humanity of the characters shines through and the reader can't help but feel for their individual dilemmas and suffering.

[Piyangie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first exposure to Graham Greene. Two of his books have been in my personal collection for about a year now, somehow or other being pushed behind other reads until now. I do need a little preparation of mind when I venture into a new author, for I'm always nervous in such situations. However, after the read, I felt like kicking myself for keeping the book so long on my shelf.

The first thing that drew me into the book is not the story or characters, but Greene's intense and powerful writing. He displays such rawness, such openness, and such sincerity in his writing that the readers are drawn, ensnared, and imprisoned in his words. If you consider the story, it is pretty simple. But it is only the foundation for Greene to develop all the raw human emotions one feels when a relationship ends. I read that Greene's personal relationship with one Lady Walston inspired him to write this, so perhaps the personal experience speaks for the intensity of his writing.

The story is simple and beautiful. The first-person narrator, who is also the male protagonist, tells his story of the end of an affair; and at the same time, he goes beyond his story, laying bare all his inner conflicting emotions to his audience. The story touches thematically on love, hate, pain, jealousy, obsession, life, death, and faith. Greene has worked strongly on the themes through the relationship of the male protagonist, the writer Maurice Bendrix and the female protagonist Sarah Miles, the wife of a civil servant.

There are very few characters in the novel, and I cannot say that I truly liked any of them. But I get this queer feeling that Greene was bent upon his characters being understood rather than being liked. If that was his goal, he did achieve it brilliantly. You may find it hard to like them, but you will certainly understand them; you will feel their emotions and you will pity them.

The story is tragic, yet I enjoyed it. The ending deviates from the thematic flow of the story creating an out of sorts effect, but the overall reading experience was satisfying. I could honestly say that Graham Greene has done very well with a common theme.

More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/

[Lesle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greene's Personal Affair:
The book is dedicated to "C" (Catherine Walston), who was Greene's mistress (1946-1950 his proposal date, till her death in 1978) he was smitten by a lock of her hair) and goddaughter to his wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning from 1927 until his death (1991), though they separated in 1947.

They exchanged letters of conscience and dreams. "I woke up this morning very calm and quiet...after an odd dream of being dead, but even dead there were women and bedrooms" Which both death and women were on his mind. Her letters were written on her husband's estate stationery, Thriplow Farm and Greene destroyed those. She kept his. "I love onion sandwiches. G.," and IWTFY" were often exchanged as code for making love.

The Novel:
The first line sets the tone in such a beautiful but dark, reflecting novel of faith, hate, jealousy, love, religion and suffering.

'A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.’

The novel contains details of an intense long-term affair between Maurice and Sarah. Set in London.

Maurice Bendrix is a complex yet flawed man. He hires a detective to find his rival, as he longs for and is painfully obsessed with Sarah Miles whom loves with all consuming feelings for Bendrix. BUT she has a different kind of love for another that is intrusive into her life.

Sarah's exhaustion from emotional turmoil becomes fatal when she runs out into the rain avoiding Maurice. This state leads her into a severe infection. Maurice refuses forgiveness as his feelings are the only thing connecting him to her.

The sentiment of the story focuses on the exchange between two that are fleeting illusions of romance and yet still finds a deeper meaning of profound grace in this affair.

[Adam Dalva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkable structure - the plot twists and turns in unexpected ways. The meta-textual aspects were great (his mini-essay on flat characters toward the end jumps out), as were the ways that he allows the narrator to waffle. There is a found text interval that I found slow, which brings us to the one problem: this is one of Greene's "Catholic Novels," and I am convinced that the focus on Catholicism did damage to the book. The moment the upper case Him appeared, the plot began to diffuse and the stakes were reduced. It is still a pleasure, but despite my affection for the characters, returns diminished.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this book until the last few chapters. And then I wanted to throw it across the room.

I knew the basic plot of The End of the Affair because I had seen the movie version with Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore, but this was my first serious consideration of the text. It is a novel about the jealousy and anger one man feels after a love affair has ended.

“I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.”

Maurice Bendrix is a writer who is obsessed with Sarah Miles. Sarah abruptly ended her affair with Maurice one day in 1944, after a bomb blast nearly killed him in his London house. Suddenly she refused to see him and didn't speak to him for more than a year.

After bumping into Sarah's husband, Henry, Maurice contacts a private detective to follow her. The investigator steals Sarah's journal, which Maurice reads and discovers why she broke off the relationship.

(There are spoilers ahead, but I can't discuss my complaints about the book without mentioning this plot point. Since this novel is more than 60 years old and has been made into two movies, I think I can proceed.)

The journal reveals that Sarah had been at Maurice's house when the bomb hit, and he had been knocked unconscious. Sarah couldn't rouse him and thought he was dead. She wasn't religious but she began to pray, and she told God she wouldn't see Maurice any more if he would be allowed to live. When Maurice recovered, Sarah decided to keep her promise to God and ended the affair.

Sarah struggles with this sudden belief in God, and wishes she could return to Maurice. She even meets with a Catholic priest to talk about converting.

“I've caught belief like a disease. I've fallen into belief like I fell in love.”

When Maurice reads her journal and learns she still loves him, he contacts her and begs her to leave her husband. Sarah refuses. She soon dies from pneumonia, and both Maurice and Henry mourn her.

At this point, I had only a few complaints about the novel. Much of the writing is powerful, especially when Greene wrote about Maurice's anger. The story is told from Maurice's point of view, with the exception of a few pages from Sarah's journal, but she never felt real to me. Maurice talks about his love and lust for her, and we read some of her own words, but Sarah was not a fully realized character. She was slight, ephemeral, and would slip through your fingers.

For example, there were a few details of Sarah's kindness and generosity, but in her journal, she wrote: "I'm a bitch and a fake and I hate myself." Her journal didn't match the person Maurice described, and I don't think Greene wrote women well.

Additionally, the so-called love that Sarah and Maurice had did not seem real. Greene, who reportedly based Sarah on his real-life mistress, was good at writing about jealousy and rage, but not love. We see Maurice's obsession with her, but it's all telling and no showing.

The story takes a weird turn after Sarah's death. There are several "miracles" that happen to different characters, and it's implied that Sarah has magically influenced events from beyond the grave. This is when I got disgusted with the book. I didn't believe any of the miracles, and I didn't believe that Maurice would believe in God because of those acts.

“I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone forever."

It seemed like Greene didn't know how to end the novel, so he threw in some miraculous works of God. I call bullshit.

I understand that in real life, Greene was a Catholic. By coincidence, I read this novel shortly after finishing Brideshead Revisited, which also has religious and Catholic themes. I know England has a dark history with Catholicism, but come on, guys. I need a break from all this evangelism.

I listened to this on audio, read by Colin Firth, and if I were to rate just Firth's performance, it would be 5 stars. He was phenomenal. However, I have enough complaints about the text and by the end was so irritated with the story arc that I'm giving this book a 3.

[Laysee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The End of the Affair, published in 1951, pits love and adultery against religion, and the outcome is a disturbing but well written classic that I found difficult to read.

Maurice Bendrix, a writer, tells the story of his passionate love affair with a married woman. The novel begins with Bendrix’s bitter declaration, ”I hated Henry – I hated his wife Sarah too.” Of course, I wanted to know why. Bendrix is determined to write ’a record of hate far more than of love’. As it turned out, it is a story that he himself could not have anticipated.

When researching a story with a senior civil servant as the main character, Bendrix got to know Henry, cultivated Sarah’s friendship, and pursued a 4-year long affair with her. As the title of the book suggests, the affair ended. Bendrix becomes obsessed about who Sarah’s next lover might be and is intensely jealous of Henry. However, Henry, obsessed with work, remains clueless for a long time, and even confides his anxiety about Sarah to Bendrix. Bendrix engages a private detective to track Sarah’s movements, which leads to shocking discoveries of what he means to her.

On another level, Graham explores his characters’ struggles with moral ambiguities surrounding their own conduct and choices. Sarah calls herself ’a bitch and a fake’, and declares ”I want ordinary corrupt human love.” Of Sarah, Bendrix said, ”.. she had a wonderful way of eliminating remorse. Unlike the rest of us she was not haunted by guilt.”, but he could not have been more wrong. Sarah has a crudely superstitious faith, which precipitated the end of the affair. Bendrix, too, fights with God and glories miserably in his unbelief and need to believe.

It is hard to read a book in which there are no likeable characters. Bendrix is bitter, mean, and obnoxious; Henry is hardworking, amiable, but boring and passive; Sarah is beautiful, shallow and needs to be constantly admired. All of them are troubled and none found the peace they are looking for. That continuous religious wrangling becomes wearisome for me after a while.

That said, Greene writes a strong prose. His writing is an Incisive dissection of human motives and reveals, unapologetically, the dross hidden from public eye.

I like and hate this book at the same time. This, I attribute, to Graham Greene’s masterful writing.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not at peace anymore. I just want him like I used to in the old days. I want to be eating sandwiches with him. I want to be drinking with him in a bar. I’m tired and I don’t want anymore pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don’t want it now. Take it away for a while and give it me another time.

I'm reeling in astonishment at this incredible work. Not only was Colin Firth's audio performance of this astounding (do yourself a favour and listen - you will be transported), but the WRITING, oh the writing of this perfect novel had me in the first few paragraphs, knowing that this book would be one of my new favourites. I found myself going back to the print version to drool over phrases and chapters that were lingering with me.

This is the story of Maurice Bendrix, a man consumed with hatred. His lover Sarah had called off their affair two years earlier during WW2 (her reasons unknown to him) and he is steeped in bitterness. By chance, he runs into Henry, Sarah's husband, and it re-ignites his hate and jealousy, so much so he hires a private eye to spy on her.

We learn all about the affair, how it began, and Sarah's reasons for ending it. The love story alone is so compelling. The descriptions of their love and desire for each other are gorgeous and painful. Bendrix is a jealous lover, who loses trust the moment she is out of his sight. Their love is double-edged and so real. So ordinary, corrupt and human. So beautiful.

Sometimes I get tired of trying to convince him that I love him and shall love him for ever. He pounces on my words like a barrister and twists them. I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can’t realize that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud, I say to myself silently and write it here.

But to the tale of passion Greene adds in a spiritual dimension that blows the story sky-high, giving readers so much to mull over. What is faith, what is divine intervention? Does God exist and hear our prayers? To what extent will He go to confirm and inspire belief? Or is it all in our heads? There are many crises in this book - those of the heart and those of the spirit. By bringing God into the equation, Greene created a four-way love story that gripped this reader's heart AND soul.

You needn't be so scared. Love doesn't end. Just because we don't see each other...

[L A i N E Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.”

HOLY SMOKES! Who would have thought this book, this very popular, turn-into-a-film book represents the whole of my psych of romantic / coupling ideas!!

I AM BENDRIX:
“I’m jealous even of the past... I would be just as angry because she refused to be jealous of my past or my possible future.”





AND I AM CONCURRENTLY SARAH:
The living in the moment and feeling it with conviction thing of hers,
“She said to me suddenly, without being questioned ‘I’ve never loved anybody or anything as I do you.’” And “She had no doubts. The moment only mattered.”

But more importantly -
“I want everything, all the time, everywhere.” Ahh a woman after my own heart.

Is anything more infuriating than being in a passionate argument where the other party is committed to behave in a maddeningly rational manner? I so so feel for Bendrix when he’s in this predicament.

And oh the WRITING!

“Because I couldn’t bear the thought of her so much as touching another man, I feared it all the time, and I saw intimacy in the most casual movement of her hand.”

[Melina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Έρωτας, πάθος, εμμονή, αγάπη, μίσος, ζήλια, ενοχές, απώλεια,θρησκεία, πίστη, πνευματικότητα. Αισθήματα και έννοιες που ο συγγραφέας, με αφηγηματική δεινότητα, αναλύει τόσο όμορφα και στρωτά, με μια γλώσσα ανεπιτήδευτη, κατανοητή μα παράλληλα επιβλητική, που δεν μπορείς παρά να ακολουθείς με δέος. Η ζήλια του εραστή σα να ζωντανεύει μπροστά στα μάτια σου, σε πιάνει απ’ τον λαιμό και νιώθεις να σε πνίγει όταν λέει:

‘’Καλύτερα να πεθάνω ή να σε δω νεκρή παρά με άλλον άντρα. Δεν είμαι παράξενος. Έτσι είναι ο φυσιολογικός έρωτας. Ρώτα όποιον θες… όλοι θα σου πουν το ίδιο… αν αγάπησαν πραγματικά. Όποιος αγαπάει ζηλεύει.’’

‘’Αρνιόμουν να πιστέψω ότι ο έρωτας μπορούσε να πάρει οποιαδήποτε άλλη μορφή απ’ αυτή με την οποία εκδηλωνόταν ο δικός μου: Μετρούσα τον έρωτα ανάλογα με την ένταση της ζήλιας μου και μ’ αυτό το μέτρο κατέληγα φυσικά στο συμπέρασμα ότι εκείνη δεν με αγαπούσε καθόλου.''

Όμως η Σάρα μετρούσε την αγάπη με δικά της μέτρα και σταθμά. Με αυτά της αυτοθυσίας και της αυταπάρνησης. Και έτσι ο σχεδόν εμμονικός, σαρκικός, καθ’ όλα γήινος έρωτας του εραστή αντιπαραβάλλεται με την βαθιά αφοσίωση και τη σχεδόν πνευματική αγάπη της συζύγου. Μια αγάπη ιερή, όπως θα έπρεπε να είναι η κάθε αγάπη. Ένας έρωτας τόσο φλογερός που του ανήκει μια θέση στους μεγαλύτερους λογοτεχνικούς έρωτες του 20ου αιώνα.

‘’Είναι παράξενο να ανακαλύπτεις ότι αγαπήθηκες, όταν ξέρεις ότι δεν έχεις τίποτα που θα μπορούσε να αγαπήσει κάποιος άλλος εκτός απ’ τον πατέρα σου, τη μητέρα σου ή το Θεό’’.

Εκείνος να επιθυμεί να πιστέψει σε Αυτόν που πίστευε αυτή, σε Αυτόν που αυτή τόσο αγαπούσε. Όμως πώς να πιστέψεις σε Θεό, όταν σου παίρνει αυτό που περισσότερο αγαπάς;
Και αν παραδέχεται την ύπαρξή Του ... αρνείται την αποδοχή Του...

Η στάση του Μώρις μου θύμισε έντονα τον Ιβάν Καραμάζωφ όταν είπε : " Δεν είναι πως δεν παραδέχομαι το Θεό, μα τον κόσμο που δημιούργησε αυτός, τον κόσμο του Θεού, δεν τον παραδέχομαι και αρνιέμαι να τον παραδεχτώ".
Εννοώντας προφανώς τον κόσμο όπως τον ξέρουμε.. Με την τρομακτική ποσότητα δυστυχίας, τα τόσα βάσανα, τις αγωνίες, τις στεναχώριες ...

Όπως είχε πει ο Καμυ για τον Ιβάν Καραμάζωφ: "Ο Ιβάν δεν αρνείται τη ύπαρξη του Θεού, απλώς δικάζει το Θεό εν ονόματι μιας υψηλότερης αρχής- της δικαιοσύνης. Εάν ο Θεός υπάρχει αληθινά, είναι απαράδεκτος γιατί είναι άδικος ".

Εν ολίγοις, το βιβλίο αυτό είναι κάτι πολύ παραπάνω από μια απλή ρομαντική ιστορία με μεταφυσικά στοιχεία και νομίζω πως μόνο αν κάποιος συνειδητοποιήσει το γεγονός αυτό, θα μπορέσει να το απολαύσεις στο έπακρο...

[PorshaJo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating 4.5

I'm a firm believer a narrator can make or break a book. Also, there are times where I listen to an audio for just the narrator. This is one of those times. To have Mr. Darcy, eh...I mean Colin Firth read a story to you. The best.

The End of the Affair is a story about hate, and love, but really hate. Maurice Bendrix is a writer and just consumed with hate. His hatred for Sarah Miles and her ending their love affair. Bendrix is just consumed with his love for her, his jealousy, it all makes him hate her and distrust her. He is so blinded by all his emotions that he doesn't really see that Sarah loves him. But he can't figure out why all of sudden she has ended the affair. Sometime later he finds out how truly Sarah does love him but very shortly after she dies. Again he is consumed with hate but focuses his hate on God.

The End of the Affair is one I've wanted to read, actual print. But then I ended up watching the latest movie version. I loved it! So I said 'now read the book' but when I saw it was narrated by Colin Firth I had to have it. I'd rate the story around 4 but bumped it up for the wonderful narration. Bendrix is such a miserable guy who suffers from 'you don't know what you have until you've lost it' but you can't help but feel for him. It's odd to have enjoyed a book with such hate and to have a review with that word used so many times. Just goes to show what a great character study this one is (and I'm a sucker for those books). Slight difference between the movie and book version and I'll give the slight nod to the movie version. I really liked them both and so happy to finally have listened to this one.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't love this novel as much as I understand I should, based upon views of my most erudite GR friends. Further processing no doubt is in order prior to penning a review.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A Thinly Disguised Autobiography" (Fictitious Letters Never Sent or Written)

Letter 1 (dated April 30, 1950 from CW to GG):

Oh, my most desirable Godfather,

I’m sorry to learn you’re suffering from writer’s block. I don't recall you mentioning this affliction before.

I’m not the best one to give advice on such matters, but they say you should write about things with which you are familiar, not that there is much for you that doesn’t fit within this category. Perhaps, my love, you could write something about us? A thinly disguised autobiography? Do you think anyone outside our circles would ever guess?

I have another idea. I’ve written down a list of key words for you. Perhaps you might find inspiration in them? For instance, you could build your novel around three, maybe even five, of them. They are, after all, some of our favourite things. See what you think of these (sorry for the length. Once I started, I couldn’t stop, except to place them in alphabetical order):

Adultery, agnostic, anxiety, atheism, belief, bitterness, body, desire, distrust, divorce, dread, envy, exactness, faith, fornication, God, guilt, happiness, hatred, injury, insecurity, integrity, jealousy, love, lust, marriage, ownership, pain, passion, peace, possessiveness, promise, quarrel, quiet, rationalism, saintliness, self-loathing, sex, tortured, touch, trust, truth, unhappiness, vow.

What do you think, my darling? Not a bad list, is it? Not that I could write a novel around such words! I could only live a life governed by them! If you were both in it and with me!

I can’t wait until our next onion sandwich, whether at the table, in bed or elsewhere...

Love,

C.


Letter 2 (dated May 12, 1950 from GG to CW):

Cafryn, sometimes I marvel at my love for you. No matter what misfortune might befall either or both of us, my love never seems to wane.

Your counsel to write an autobiography, albeit thinly disguised, is indeed the correct solution to my block. Of course, I can’t write the truth about us (lest I embrace pornography and write the first truly Great Sex Novel of our times, which I might just do for you!), but I can find inspiration in it.

I've decided to set this work during the war, you’re married to a high-ranking public servant, not a millionaire. I’m single and dote on you. Both of us are childless and able to indulge in our every sexual whim. We’ll lie stretched across every bed we can get our bodies on, we'll fornicate in front of every fireplace, upon every rug and behind every altar we can discover on our travels.

Nothing could possibly come between us, no commitment, no human, no being, except perhaps God. Even then, I haven’t quite determined how or why even He could frustrate our love, which in the manner of the greatest Love should be nothing if not eternal.

I love your list. Every word turns me on like an erogenous abstraction. In fact, each one appeals so much I can’t bring myself to abandon it. So, if you will forgive me, I will use them all. All I have to do is pad them out with suitable verbs. And there aren't many verbs to describe what I have in mind!

The proof is in the pudding, because since I embarked on this suggestion of yours, words have flown like that first plane trip of ours, during which a lock of your hair brushed my cheek and inflamed me below. Even now, as I await your arrival on Friday, I feel the same way. In my mind, I see you. I see myself touch you here...and here...and there...

Your husband,

Graham.





The Vocabulary of Love

Graham Greene did eventually write his novel, using just such words. At first, I wondered whether it was a flaw in his otherwise great literary prowess that he used so many abstract words to describe his subject matter, then I came to the conclusion that it reflected a deliberate economy of both style and vocabulary.

In such a short fiction, he didn’t need many words. He didn't need more words. He didn’t need different words. In the hands of a master, they were all the words that mattered, they were all the words he required to get to the heart of the matter.

We are left to judge whether the people and the situations he created with them are adequate to the task of great literature.

I've read the novel three times over the course of my life. While this time I was tempted to downgrade it to four stars because of stylistic issues, I decided to retain the five star rating I assigned it from my memory of the first two readings. There are not many novels that I deign to read thrice!

Adulterous and Adulterated Love

We know from the title and the beginning of the novel that there has been an affair and that it has come to an end.

Greene plays around with time and subject matter to add drama and tension to a sequence of events that contains no surprise, apart from that which preoccupies the beginning and end of most affairs: the answer to the question "why?"

Sarah Miles is married to a senior public servant in wartime England. The first person narrator (the first use of this perspective by Greene in a novel), Maurice Bendrix, is an unattached and highly available author, just starting to experience the first blush of artistic and commercial success.

Sarah’s marriage is tantamount to both loveless and sexless, but neither spouse feels any compulsion in the religious or moral environment of the time to seek a divorce.

It is only Maurice’s personal desire to legitimate his relationship that raises the question of marriage or divorce at all. Without this expectation, both relationships, the marriage and the adultery, the love triangle, give the impression they could continue in their original form until death do them part.

The Denunciation of "the Slut"

Both Sarah and Bendrix commit adultery. Yet, for decades, Sarah was painted as the worse adulterer in the public eye, the "slut" (perhaps the second greatest pejorative that can be attached to a woman?).

While Bendrix simply coveted something that "belonged" to another man, Sarah was the one who had made a promise to love, honour and obey her husband. Her adultery, as opposed to his, involved the breach of a quasi-contractual promise, a God-sanctioned vow.

In those times, and to some extent even now, that marriage vow was supposed to withstand the threat of temptation.

The "incompatibility" of the wedded couple, the sexual or emotional attraction of another, neither was supposed to be enough to justify a breach of the vow. Marriage was sacrosanct and for life. Catholicism, in particular, forbade divorce, remarriage and the legitimation of a subsequent marriage. You had to make do with and in your first marriage.

To Thine Own Love Be True

Now, outside Catholicism, at least, it is difficult to see what all of the fuss was about. If they weren’t Catholics, why didn’t Sarah just get divorced? Why didn’t Bendrix and Sarah get married, bonk themselves silly, have kids, bonk themselves silly post-kids and live happily ever after? Arguably, this is what must have been going through the mind of Bendrix, who when we meet him is an agnostic, if not an outright atheist.

Looking through 21st century eyes, well, mine at least, there is a tendency to forgive both Sarah and Bendrix their "sins", because they were being "true" to their love.

Even though Sarah was married, it was a loveless marriage. Didn't she have the right to fall in love with somebody else and act upon that love?

"The Bitch and the Fake"

The novel could have been couched in these relatively simplistic, if modern, terms. However, Greene took it a step further, by ensuring that Sarah ended the affair and did not break up her marriage to Henry Miles.

Given that we know that this would happen from the outset, the focus of the novel becomes the question of how Bendrix (in the first person, and therefore we too, in the plural) will deal with his loss, which resolves down to the explanation for what Sarah did or didn’t do.

If Sarah wasn't a Catholic, what was her problem? Was her conduct even more culpable in our eyes, precisely because she ended the affair and didn’t leave her husband? Was she actually "the bitch and the fake" she suspected she might be?

While Sarah’s real life contemporaries might have viewed her as a "slut" for engaging in the affair in the first place, when Bendrix’ narrative commences, he too is full of hate for her. Like conventional, moralistic society, he's prepared to call her every foul word under the sun ("slut", "bitch", "fake"), because she turned her back on his love.



Love Gone Wrong

From Bendrix' point of view, here were two people who appeared to have everything that was needed of a long-term or permanent relationship: emotional and intellectual compatibility, material comfort, sexual attraction and love. What went wrong?

Of course, every man who has ever been rejected or dumped by a woman must believe that they bring the same qualities to the table or the altar. There can’t be anything wrong with me. You, the woman, haven’t loved me as I have deserved. You have cheated me. Or, perhaps the explanation is that, there is another man involved, some other card player who has trumped me in the game of love?

So it is that, when we first meet Bendrix, we find him at the end of the affair, bitter and full of hatred.

The Egotism of the Male

I found it interesting that, as a non-believer throughout the whole of the novel, Bendrix fills the hole left by the absence of God with his own presence.

There is no greater authority, no moral force that is higher than the individual, himself.

Bendrix is his own god. Before Sarah, he has only been sexually attracted to women who make him feel superior, women who, in effect, worship him.

Like God, however, Bendrix the non-believer is a jealous god. There can be room for no one else in his version of love. He must remain the sole focus of Sarah’s love.

As I read on, I couldn’t even fathom how family would be accommodated in this worldview. Their love had to be able to be expressed in the form of lust and sex at a moment’s notice. Children would only get in the way of love.

The Saintliness of the "Slut"

In what might arguably be a clumsy plot device, Greene gives Bendrix access to Sarah’s personal journal, in order to explain her motives to both him and to us.

We learn that her love for this one mortal god was true, if not undivided. Sarah found herself in a predicament where she felt obliged to honour certain "absurd vows", and she did so. Like a saint, she suffered pain, she sacrificed what she loved, in order to prove a greater love. Ultimately, she did the right thing, even if she didn’t do it exactly by the [good] book.

The Paradox of Hatred

At heart, Sarah’s compulsion to honour her vows had a religious foundation, one based in the belief in the existence of a God.

Bendrix derives some sort of comfort from knowing that he was genuinely loved, but, having learned to hate, he transfers his hatred to this God, in whom he had not previously believed.

The paradox is that, in Greene’s mind, you can’t hate what does not exist. In order to hate God and what he had caused to occur, Bendrix had to will Him, God, into existence. Once it was established that He existed, it was equally possible to hate or love Him.

Thus, while "The End of the Affair" is superficially a tale of a "failed" romance, if not just an affair that "ended", it seems at the conclusion that it might actually be the beginning of another love affair, that between Bendrix and the God of Catholicism.

Choosing Which Vows to Honour and Obey

Ironically, both Bendrix and Greene, male protagonist and author alike, wish to approach their God on their own terms. Having felt superior and godlike, they are reluctant to surrender their earthly, carnal privileges.

God is holy and they must be obedient to Him, only to the extent that He allows them/us [males?] to indulge in love, romance, desire and sex on their/our own terms. The body is the vehicle through which you both have sex and worship God, hence a slight twist on the object of worship in the the marriage vow, "With my body, I Thee worship."

This compromise, this personalized version of a belief in God, your own God, remained vital in Greene and his fiction for the rest of his life.

Presumably, in his own eyes, it allowed him to be "closer my God to Thee", if not necessarily closer to God’s Church, its teachings, the Sacrament of Penance or the Rite of Confession, what Bendrix calls "your bloody little box and your beads".



VERSE:

"They Call That Virtue and This Sin"
[After a Poem by Graham Greene]

Who did dare to fashion
What rules govern passion?
What arbiter of taste
Or godly person faced
The challenge to decide
Which laws we should abide?
Why does some God above
Prescribe how we must love,
Adultery's a sin,
Marriage should lock us in?
What sex should be a vice,
Though it feels very nice?
May I remove your mask,
Allow me, please, to ask,
"If it doesn't hurt you,
Why's it not a virtue?"



"The Third Woman"

My review of a book about the real-life adulterous relationship between Graham Greene and Catherine Walston, which inspired "The End of the Affair" is here:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...



SOUNDTRACK:

Rilo Kiley - "The Absence Of God"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bkyBp...

"And Morgan says, 'Maybe love won't let you down.
All of your failures are training grounds,
And just as your back's turned, you'll be surprised,'
She says, 'As your solitude subsides.'"

Rilo Kiley - "The Absence Of God" [Live Version]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNwpm...

Rilo Kiley - "More Adventurous"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfAtMA...

"I'd sacrifice money and heaven all for love
Let me be loved, let me be loved...
I've been trying to nod my head,
But it's like I've got a broken neck
Wanting to say I will as my last testament
For you to be saved and me to be brave
We don't have to walk down that aisle
'Cause if marriage ain't enough
Well at least we'll be loved."