The End of the Affair

By Graham Greene

Book Overview

The classic tale of love, hate, and faith from one of the 20th century's greatest novelists

"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 further into his emotional outlook, Bendrix's hatred shifts to the God he feels has broken his life, but whose existence at last comes to recognize.

Originally published in 1951, The End of the Affair was acclaimed by William Faulkner as "for me one of the best, most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody's language." This Penguin Deluxe Edition features an introduction by Michael Gorra.

Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0142437980
• ISBN13: 9780142437988
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

A compelling look at adultery and God

This was an excellent book. I plowed through it in one evening. A quick but powerful read. The narrator is a near-successful writer living in London just before the start of WWII. Looking for inspiration for a novel about civil workers, he takes the wife of a fairly important civil worker out for dinner. She is interested in him, and this in turn sparks desire from him. They begin an affair that lasts throughout the war until the day the first V1 rockets fall. She breaks it off suddenly, without any reason known to the narrator. The husband never finds out, wrapped up in his work he does not even realize his marriage is more a friendship than anything. Two years later, the narrator has had no contact at all with his lover. Until he runs into her troubled husband. They are only acquaintances, but the husband confides in the narrator his suspicions of another man. He thinks his wife is having an affair. The narrator hates his former lover, but jealousy now rears its head again. How could she take yet another lover after him? After their undying promises? He engages a private investigator to follow her. All of this sounds fairly sordid. And it is. But love, real love, does flow through this novel. How difficult love is. How close love is to hate. How hatred can even be a twisted form of love. The two intense emotions are the flip sides of the same coin. There are some good observations on the nature of writing itself. The narrator observes that most things are already written by the unconscious before the first word is put on paper. I find that to be true. Walking, sitting around, eating, reading, taking a shower, are all essential writing periods. The narrator has the habit of writing five hundred words a day, then stopping. Even in the middle of a sentence. I find that crazy. You ride the horse until it gets tired, or it runs away from you. Don't try to box it in. About halfway through the novel, a twist anyone with half a brain can see coming occurs. From there the novel expands beyond the themes of adultery, love, and hate. The private investigator manages to steal the wife's journal. Now the former lover can peer into her heart and mind and read the truth. What he finds is nothing like what he expected. Graham Greene struggled with his Catholicism his entire life. The sacred and the profane. The spirit and the flesh. Whether everything is just a coincidence. And the second half of this novel plays this struggle out in the love triangle. In the end, an atheist finds God through hate. Some may dislike the way the story turns from the personal into a more universal theme, but I thought it was genius. Highly recommended.

Great book. I read the first 8 chapters in the store.

The doomed love story of Bendrix and Sarah in "The End of the Affair" forced me to reflect on the power of faith and God himself, a creature I'm none too eager to embrace. Because it did this, I found myself very wrapped up in this book, moreso than I even wanted to be, for I was just browsing through the bookstore when I picked it up. I read the first eight chapters while I was still sitting in the store. At the point where I was still reading it after my fourth cup of Earl Grey, I realized that Graham Greene is a genius, and the book is incredibly smart. It's a fictionalized account of an affair between an author and his married neighbor during the air raids in WWII London that ended suddenly one day without explanation. Though their love was passionate and real, though Bendrix and Sarah were mad for each other, she ends the affair and all contact with him the day one of the shells goes off near the house they're occupying, momentarily knocking Bendrix unconscious. Something happened to Sarah while Bendrix was unconscious, something intangible, spiritual and rooted in her love, that scared her to death and forced her to break things off. But Bendrix, knowing Sarah is not one for cruelty, won't explain what happened and won't really even see him.Months afterward, Bendrix is still obsessed and hires a private investigator to find out what's become of Sarah and figure out why she dumped him so abruptly to return to the life with her husband that she didn't want or enjoy.All of this makes for, of course, fascinating mystery. It also leads in an unexpected direction regarding spirituality, the existence of God, the need for suffering and the occasional torture that rational thinkers face when dealing with the unexplainable. Bendrix, being a skeptic regarding God, can't quite deal with exactly what happened to Sarah, which he eventually discovers but cannot completely accept.This book affected the way I think. Brilliant novel.

Close to perfect

Thank God for the Contemporary Lit professor who made us read "The End of the Affair." Since that first, blissful reading, I've reread this novel at least six times, and I always end up giving away my copy to a fellow reader. The story seems so simple: Bendridx, a self-absorbed bachelor writer, has an affair with Sarah, the wife of Bendrix's friend, Henry. The relationship sparks love inside of Bendrix, and reawakens passions in Sarah, until a bomb falls, leading Sarah to make a deal with God: if God lets Bendrix live, she'll give him up forever. After Bendrix's miraculous recovery, Sarah keeps her promise, even as she tries to disbelieve in God: if, after all, there is no God, then her deal doesn't count. The harder she seeks atheism, the stronger her faith becomes, even to the point where miracles appear to happen in her presence. The characters in this novel--and the myriad relationships between them--are seamlessly drawn. Also, Greene handles the combination of past and present tenses, plus excerpts from Sarah's diary, with a master's touch and clarity. Best of all, you can take "The End of the Affair" on any level you want, from a simple wartime romance to a complex spiritual fable, and it succeeds regardless. One of Greene's contemporaries is quoted on the jacket, calling "The End of the Affair," one of the best novels of our time "In this or any language." That author's name is William Faulkner. Heady praise for one of the Twentieth Century's best novels.

The nature of love.....and God

Graham Greene's "The End Of The Affair" is one of the most powerful and gripping books I have read all year. If I had to describe in a word or a phrase what the novel is about, I'd say it's about the nature of love. Does love between human beings share the same source as that between Man and his creator ? The question of faith and Catholicism in particular has long been a favourite theme of Greene's and here he digs deep and mines it to the fullest. The novel's unique structure and way the love story between Maurice and Sarah is told with multiple flashbacks gives it an expansive romantic sweep that lends itself to cinematic adaptation. I have yet to see the film version but if it succeeds in capturing the essence of the novel, it promises to be breathtaking. Oddly enough, I detect shades of the grand love affair between Count Almasey and Katherine Clifton in "The English Patient". Just when you think the novel has reached its emotional climax, Greene surprises by going the extra mile to infuse the denouement with a deeply religious flavour that is simply brilliant. The execution is deftly handled, never threatening to overload the love story with heavy duty meaning. "The End Of The Affair" makes for wonderful reading. Don't miss it !

Superbly written, well-plotted, realistic, haunting

The story of a woman lost between two men, a husband and a lover, told from the lover's point of view. The plot is dramatic, the characters unwittingly and wittingly involved in one of the most common human stories. Greene's writing style is perfect. There is not a word or an activity wasted, and at the same time the tale is beautifully and compellingly told. This book is an amazing example of the finest literary composition, but it is also fascinating in the acute and at times understated manner in which these three character's psychologies play together to enmesh the hearts of two men and the life of the woman. This is also a spiritual novel, asking questions while at the same time attempting answers. And throughout, there is a strong sense of honesty that one doesn't find in most romantic novels. The characters seem to be real persons, whose lives are not dramatic or dramatized, but related in all their smallness, their dissatisfaction, their quest for understanding, and that inexplicable desire for something more. I was surprised to find that this small book was such a satisfying as well as haunting read. Anyone planning to write fiction, particularly romance (not that silly fluff romance, but something meaningful), should become acquainted with this novel. It tells so much so very well.