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The End of the Affair (Vintage Classics)
 
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The End of the Affair (Vintage Classics) (Paperback)

by Graham Greene (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (4 Jan 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 009928605X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099286059
  • Product Dimensions: 19.7 x 13.2 x 1.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 432,841 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #16 in  Books > Fiction > Genre > Film & Television Tie-In
    #40 in  Books > Fiction > Film Tie-ins
    #81 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Greene, Graham

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
Set in London during and just after World War II, Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is a pathos-laden examination of a three-way collision between love of self, love of another and love of God. The affair in question involves Maurice Bendrix, a solipsistic novelist, and a dutifully married woman, Sarah Miles. The lovers meet at a party thrown by Sarah's dreary civil-servant husband, and proceed to liberate each other from boredom and routine unhappiness. Reflecting on the ebullient beginnings of their romance, Bendrix recalls: "There was never any question in those days of who wanted whom--we were together in desire". Indeed, the affair goes on unchecked for several years until, during an afternoon tryst, Bendrix goes downstairs to look for intruders in his basement and a bomb falls on the building. Sarah rushes down to find him lying under a fallen door, and immediately makes a deal with God, whom she has never particularly cared for:
"I love him and I'll do anything if you'll make him alive... I'll give him up forever, only let him be alive with a chance... People can love each other without seeing each other, can't they, they love You all their lives without seeing You".
Bendrix, as evidenced by his ability to tell the story, is not dead, merely unconscious, and so Sarah must keep her promise. She breaks off the relationship without giving a reason, leaving Bendrix mystified and angry. The only explanation he can think of is that she's left him for another man. It isn't until years later, when he hires a private detective to ascertain the truth, that he learns of her impassioned vow. Sarah herself comes to understand her move through a strange rationalisation. Writing to God in her journal, she says:
"You willed our separation, but he [Bendrix] willed it too. He worked for it with his anger and his jealousy, and he worked for it with his love. For he gave me so much love, and I gave him so much love that soon there wasn't anything left, when we'd finished, but You".
It's as though the pull toward faith were inevitable, if incomprehensible--perhaps as punishment for her sin of adultery. In her final years, Sarah's faith only deepens, even as she remains haunted by the bombing and the power of her own attraction to God. Set against the backdrop of a war-ravaged city, The End of the Affair is equally haunting as it lays forth the question of what constitutes love in troubling, unequivocal terms. --Melanie Rehak

Review
"One of the most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody's language." --William Faulkner

"[His] best novel...its focus on the irrational is very relevant to contemporary life." --Neil Jordan, "Independent on Sunday

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Customer Reviews

25 Reviews
5 star:
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4 star:
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3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (25 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and disturbing!, 5 Jan 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: The End of the Affair (Twentieth Century Classics) (Paperback)
Have read this novel during the sixties during my University years in Coimbra (Portugal) and became unconditional fan of Greene of whom I read since all the production. The end of the Affair is is in my view his best! While in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) last week I found one of its first editions in portuguese and bought it again. The feeling I like the most is a disturbing one: how a non believer like Sarah sticks to a promise to a God she doesn't want to believe in and how this absurdity becomes her highjest proof of love - for Bendix and for God! The fact that we know little of ourselves our unconscious beliefs, was highly disturbing to me... Recommended story to everyone who asks him(her)self on who he or she really is though it cannot respond to any question, just add more. Excellent and disturbing book.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars This book is unputdownable, 3 Mar 2000
By alexss@liv.ac.uk (Liverpool, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The End of the Affair (Essential Penguin) (Paperback)
It got to me at an emotional level as much as anything I have read in my 52 years (I originally typed 'tears' - was this Freudian or just qwerty?) Bendrix's obsessive love / hate for Sarah (and also for her god) - both of which are reciprocated, in different ways, by Sarah - will probably hook you just as they did me - especially so if you can identify with Bendrix's and Sarah's tight-assed, 1950s, oh-so-English repression. I couldn't put this perfectly crafted 190-pager down; I found myself tripping at the top of escalators, exclaiming in the street, crying in the train. Read it.
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A story has no beginning... or end?, 5 Dec 2004
By Jonathan James Romley (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
A book for anyone who has ever been left so heartbroken and frustrated that they can't even speak without launching into a bitter lament against such superficial feelings as love, faith and devotion. Greene's genius was always his ability to create lasting and believable characters that jostled with issues that were central to the writer, but also, could be understood and re-interpreted by the reader. In The End of the Affair, it is his own sense of heartbreak following a real-life affair he began during the war that acts as the central crux of the emotional and heartbreaking story, that is here, taken further by elements of fictitious fantasy, religious guilt and what must be one of the greatest uses of a self-referential narrative arc ever developed in post-war-literary history.

Here, Greene recasts himself as the dolorous writer Bendrix, who, without even realising it until it is too late, has fallen into a passionate and illicit affair with Sarah, the wife of his meek (and perhaps impotent) friend and associate Henry. Greene juggles the perspectives so that each of this troika get to express their feelings (which are actually the varied conscious voices of the author), in order to further the story, as well as acting as something of an essay into infidelity, obsession, guilt and bereavement. The story could have easily fallen into the realms of melodrama, prefiguring those turgid disease-of-the-week films like Love Story (and so on), but Greene is able to break down the melancholy with elements of a detective story, with Bendrix involving himself in unravelling an affair that turns out to be nothing but an after shock.

There are also elements of black comedy, an intelligent analysis of catholic-angst and an interesting use of character perspective, as Greene changes the view of the story mid-way from Bendrix to Sarah (then later, back again!) in order to tell the story from both points-of-view... a device that allows Greene to look at the two disparate sides of the tale, and also, to further develop the subtle nuances of the characters. The writing is fantastic throughout, with Greene ably conjuring the decaying embers of Post World War II London; whilst the blitz-set love scenes burn with a passion and intensity that few British writers (of Greene's generation) could equate (for more genius, see Brighton Rock!).

The End of the Affair is a great book that still manages to convey that all-important sense of loss, guilt and sadness with a vitriol that seems fierce enough to tear through a brick wall, whilst screaming in the face of pious notions of reminisce and forgiveness (in a typically 50's 'very-English' sort-of-way, of course). As others have said before, certain notions in regards to the politics and sociology of the piece have dated in the decades that have passed since the book's first publication, but this is hardly cause for despair. The book's reason for being has always been about the relationship between the three characters, the notions discussed above and the emotional connection created between the story, the characters and the reader. On these counts, The End of the Affair is a relevant today as it was when first created.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Worthy of being called a classic
I have recommended this book to all my friends, regardless of the type of literature they read. It is well written, relatively short, easy to read and highly evocative, a rare... Read more
Published 2 days ago by Shamila

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark, disturbing, passionate and beautiful
This is a book about darkness and light, but mostly darkness.

It is about jealousy, vengeance, bitterness, loathing - I could go on. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Sarah Brown

5.0 out of 5 stars The space between us
Anyone who has lived in London could place the Common that forms a geographical centrepiece in The End Of The Affair by Graham Greene. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Philip Spires

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gem
I recently re watched the film as I loved that very much and it put me in the notion for reading the book. Boy was it worth it. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Trickle Tree

4.0 out of 5 stars Gripping and quite poignant
An interesting study of sexual and emotional jealousy and insecurity. The edning is very downbeat and bitter.
Published 18 months ago by John Hopper

3.0 out of 5 stars An unpleasant book, but well written!
Years ago I read Brighton Rock because I thought I ought to read some Graham Greene. I thought it was brilliantly written, compelling and yet quite hideous. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley

4.0 out of 5 stars A devastating love story
Is there anyone out there who doesn't know the basic premise of this book, which was first published in 1951 and has remained in print ever since? Read more
Published 22 months ago by kimbofo

4.0 out of 5 stars Graham Greene's Truth
The End of the Affair was my first encounter with Greene and well and truly won me over to his dark, distinctly British novels. Read more
Published on 22 Jul 2004 by lmmcdonagh

5.0 out of 5 stars .
With The End of the Affair, Greene wrote the type of fiction that English writers (McEwan,for instance) have been aspiring to create ever since: rich in the ambiguities that... Read more
Published on 13 Jul 2002 by tardypigeon

4.0 out of 5 stars A Reasonable Affair
One of Greene's more overtly Catholic novels, which succeeds or fails depending on how far you believe people would sacrifice ther desires for God. Read more
Published on 28 Dec 2001 by B. Ukiah

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