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 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 someone punched you in the stomach. And you see that person in everything, so the pain is always there. The sharp, unbearable pain, 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 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.
all-time-favorites favorites good-fiction ...more576 s3 comments Paul Bryant2,274 10.5k

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. 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 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 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.autobiographical-novels novels364 s7 comments Jennifer Masterson200 1,294

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. a-whole-lotta-cheetin-going-on audio classics ...more314 s1 comment karen3,994 171k

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 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 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 unability of his narrator. this book is worth reading for sarah's diary alone.

i groan with loving this book.

come to my blog!distant-lands littry-fiction280 s Fergus, Quondam Happy Face1,099 17.7k

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 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 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.279 s Adina 1,016 4,185

“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.
1001 british mcewan-barnes-coetzee-and-co ...more271 s Margaret M - months of catching up to do523 1,431

“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 s

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 ... “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 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.vintage-classics205 s1 comment Jim Fonseca1,118 7,446

I’ll start with the basics from the GR blurb so that I don’t give away much more plot.

"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 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 . 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 d 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 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…”

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

british-authors catholicism favorite-books ...more193 s Fabian973 1,903

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.favorites183 s Julie G 923 3,295

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 C.S. Lewis on crack, Penelope Lively minus the incest. And, at the same time, he writes 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 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.a-buck-and-change favorite-books your-cheatin-heart173 s Kelly889 4,499

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. 20th-century-postwar-to-late always-on-my-mind brit-lit ...more160 s Jason137 2,504

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 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, , “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 d was Henry and I got the suspicious feeling I was supposed to dis him, so it was just an all around mismatch for me. But I will try to do better next time.2013 reviewed142 s1 comment Lizzy305 165

Spoil alert!

Can a reader feel having a split personality? I doubted myself while reading Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. I loved it and hated it; I thought it certainly deserved 5 stars for a few pages, but later found myself suffering so much and started loathing it. So, it could not deserve more than 2, right? It’s not fair to suffer for nothing, I had to make someone pay for it! I loved Sarah and Bendrix and despised them at the same time. Don’t try to understand me, I don’t understand myself! Such beautiful passages about love, but suddenly it seemed about hate and jealousy, and I found myself betrayed! How can someone that loves so deeply, as Greene makes us believe Sarah loved Bendrix, later give him up for a God most of the time she doesn’t believe in herself. Oh, I could commiserate with Bendrix for being abandoned without any explanation. I could not understand Sarah, for I am not even sure if I am a believer. But my beliefs are beyond the point. So, please, discount my failings in this respect. Bendrix’s position I could identify with, and did. I knew that my love would easily turn to hate after such a betrayal while so much in love. Thus, the jealousy I could understand. Would I go to such length to prove myself right? I don’t know, but I was never in his position and being honest with myself I have to say that, hypothetically, I might.

Greene writes so majestically, that I could live with it all as he speaks of Bendrix or his own pain (it is almost a confessional, afterall):
"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."
Enough about how I loved and hated Sarah and Bendrix’s love tragedy. Summing it up, this is a beautifully written, sad, angry, heartbreaking novel. It is about a passionate and illicit love affair that metamorphoses through into a religious epiphany. It's the story of Maurice Bendrix, a British writer, who falls in love with Sarah, a woman married to Henry, a civil servant. They fall in love in London in 1939, during the Blitz. Their passion burn, unstoppable and with no reservations, until she leaves him unexpectedly and all that remains are bitter ashes. Betrayal, an understandable reaction is how he reacts and his ensuing preposterous crises of jealousy.

The story is not linear, it begins after the break-up, and is told by Bendrix in flashbacks. It goes back and forth, and in that is expertly done by Greene. Ultimately, Bendrix looks at the breakup from the point of view of Sarah, through her journal, and goes forward again as Bendrix tries to make amends for his past jealousy, and ends in a transcendental meditation on divinity. He dreams of a reconciliation, but that was not to be. Thus Bendrix finelly gets over his anger at Sarah, just to find out she's dying, and turns his anger at God.

So Greene/Bendrix tells at the beginning what The End of the Affair is all about:
"When I began to write I said this was a story of hatred, but I am not convinced. Perhaps my hatred is really as deficient as my love. I looked up just now from writing and caught sight of my own face in a mirror close to my desk, and I thought, does hatred really look that?"
But I am here to tell you how I am divided about it. When I started reading it, after having seen the movie, I had expectations. Expectations are hell: they make you biased within yourself. But forget about them for the time being. See how I was and still am conflicted about their story?

So, back to the beginning! The opening is superb and the ambience for the story is set. Bendrix meets Henry walking in the rain, they go for a drink and end up in Sarah and Henry’s house, Sarah is also out in that wet night, but soon returns and Bendrix tells us:
"‘It’s nice to see you,’ I said. ‘Been out for a walk?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a filthy night,’ I said accusingly, and Henry added with apparent anxiety, ‘You’re wet through, Sarah. One day you’ll catch your death of cold.’
A cliché with its popular wisdom can sometimes fall through a conversation a note of doom, yet even if we had known he spoke the truth, I wonder if either of us would have felt any genuine anxiety..."
Concomitantly we compare love and hate (are they not one and the same?). Sarah herself is conflicted:
"I said to God, ‘So that’s it. I begin to believe in you, and if I believe in you I shall hate you. I have free will to break my promise, haven’t I, but I haven’t the power to gain anything from breaking it... You let me sin, but you take away the fruits of my sin. You make me drive love out, and then you say there’s no lust for you either. What do you expect me to do now, God? Where do I go from here?’"
So, suddenly The End of the Affair becomes a discussion of God. And Sarah pleads:
"Dear God, I’ve tried to love and I’ve made such a hash of it. If I could love you, I’d know how to love them. ... I believe you are God. Teach me to love. I don’t mind my pain. It’s their pain I can’t stand. Let my pain go on and on, but stop theirs. Dear God, if only you could come down from your Cross for a while and let me get up there instead. If I could suffer you, I could heal you."
And Bendrix, towards the end I wanted to yell: not this way! But Greene conquered me, besides others with:
"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 with him more. But at the end of what Bendrix has dubbed his "record of hate", he prays:
"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 for ever."
I kept thinking that I hated and suffered with Bendrix and Sarah, for it's filled with such rolling emotions. If I am quoting Greene so much, it's only because I can't tell you better than through his own words. So, Sarah's explanation to Bencrix for how she can love him but not be with him, is superb:

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

And another passage:

"'Can you explain away love too?' I asked. 'Oh yes,' he said. 'The desire to possess in some, avarice: in others, the desire to surrender, to lose the sense of responsibility, the wish to be admired. Sometimes just the wish to be able to talk, to unburden yourself to someone who won't be bored. The desire to find again a father or a mother. And of course under it all the biological motive."

A novel written with such passion, such majesty, and that carries the reader through moments of wonder and moments of profound sadness, cannot be anything less than a masterpiece. A novel that examines love, obsession, hate and that among it all examines how its protagonists dwindle and suffer in their belief of God, is au concur.

Nevertheless, despite its beauty for all my suffering I am rating The End of the Affair 4 stars. That is the only revenge I can get for the torture I went through while reading it. Worst, later I suffered even more while I comtemplated how to go about to write my review. It probably deserves 5 stars, I am not perfect after all! But a reserve the right to change my mind, and perhaps in the future, after a gratifying revisit, I may end granting the ultimate last star. Something to look for!



classics-literay-fiction england-britain historical-fiction ...more131 s Ines321 230

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 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 stato110 s Orsodimondo2,258 2,125

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 prtagonisti 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.

inglese108 s Steven Godin2,550 2,678


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 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.classic-literature fiction great-britain109 s Samadrita295 4,919
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