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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A story has no beginning... or end?, 5 Dec 2004
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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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent and disturbing!, 5 Jan 2000
By A Customer
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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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The space between us, 9 July 2008
Anyone who has lived in London could place the Common that forms a geographical centrepiece in The End Of The Affair by Graham Greene. It doesn't really matter if it's the particular place one thinks it is, because it's what happens in the houses at or near its periphery that is central to the book. And the relationships between man and woman, between classes, between interests could be anywhere.
Maurice Bendrix is a resident of the suburban, unfashionable, southern extremity of the open space. He has rented rooms in which he labours over his writing. He is a novelist with several books and some critical acclaim to his name. He is a passionate man, a sceptic, perhaps in every sense, and he is nothing less than scheming in the way that he manipulates friends, acquaintances and probably anyone in order to conduct his research, and perhaps to secure his other interests as well. It was during one such foray into the mind of a fictional civil servant he was trying to invent that he began to see Sarah Miles. She was the wife of a real civil servant and the affair was constructed to enter her husband's mind, though it took a more conventional initial route.
Sarah and Henry, her ministry mandarin husband, live in a large freehold on the fashionable north side of the Common. One feels that, left entirely to his own devices, Maurice would not have a great deal in common with the lifestyle of the Miles household. But when he meets Sarah, he finds a passionate woman whose devotion to the institution of her marriage is not matched by the satisfaction she derives from it. Sarah's frustrations are great, her needs are obvious, and the affair with Maurice ignites.
Their passionate, highly physical affair lasts some years. One day in 1944, however, a robot bomb lands outside Maurice's house and he is injured in the blast. Initially Sarah thinks he is dead. Then, somehow, their relationship ends, maybe because she seems almost disappointed that he has survived. They see nothing of one another for two years.
Maurice, of course, assumes she has moved on to richer pastures, to another more novel lover, who can satisfy her demands in new, less committed ways. He hires a private detective to check on her. He talks to her husband and others with whom she has been acquainted. What he discovers is a surprising change of direction in her life and her priorities, a change that neither he nor Sarah's husband can either explain or accept.
Ultimately The End Of The Affair is about the space between people. Relationships are always limited, no matter how intimately they are shared. The Common, the geographical space between Maurice and Sarah, becomes a symbol of the no man's land that must be crossed when people interact. We enter into this territory when it is our intention to go part-way to meet the psyche of another, but perhaps we never really leave home. The territory can only be entered, but probably not crossed, when there is mutuality, at least a partially shared desire to meet in the unsafe space. But it remains a position that can be retracted, a space that can be abandoned at will.
But what emerges in The End Of the Affair is that this space is specific to particular relationships. Scratch the surface of a different association of that same person, and it will reveal a different territory, perhaps not even sharing recognisable landmarks with the first. Perhaps, therefore, we project onto others what we want them to be. Perhaps relationships are never really shared, and remain at best pragmatic and, more likely, ultimately selfish. In the end, The End Of The Affair suggests that they are not, but it is only a suggestion.
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