The End of the Affair (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

There is something unsettling and incongruous in this acclaimed love story, at least for me.

As one goes through the story, the characters turn more and more irrational, abhorrent and impetuous. Their feelings for each other appear more a reflection of either habit or ego. And then through the episodes of faith-healing and religious differences, the novel takes a turn even more inexplicable as it tries to conclude.

In all, the short book begins with great promise. The word play in the first half, along with the discussions and descriptions of one's feelings, sentiments and internal conflicts are absolutely marvellous. Yet, the climax and resolutions take the book far away from all the premises it starts with and without any sort of development of relationships.

...look ahead."

One "black wet January night on the Common, in 1946," writer Maurice Bendrix comes upon the fortysomething civil servant husband of his former mistress, Sarah Miles, and engages him in conversation. Over a drink, Henry Miles reveals to Bendrix that he suspects his wife of having an affair and is contemplating hiring a private detective. By the end of the evening, Miles has decided against taking action, but Bendrix goes forward with the plan himself. He learns, as a result of the investigation, the identity of the object of Sarah Miles' recent attentions as well as the reason she suddenly and unexpectedly ended their affair about 18 months prior. Bendrix, who narrates the story, explains to readers at the start, (p 1) "...this is a record of hate far more than of love, and if I come to say anything in favour of Henry and Sarah I can be trusted: I am writing against the bias because it is my professional pride to prefer the near-truth, even to the expression of my near hate." After setting things up, the jilted man shares details about his relationship with Mrs. Miles, interspersed with interactions between him and his private detective (including information the PI provides that shed light on certain significant events), Henry, and Sarah Miles. It ends entirely differently than (at least I) expected.

Best of the book: Greene's unusual habit of stringing adjectives (and nouns) in triplet (p 3), "sick, unhappy, dying," (p 24) "jaunty, adventurous, happy," and (p 38) "carefully, collectedly, quickly;" subtle foreshadowing (p 2), "I could even like poor silly Henry, I thought, if...;" fabulous phrasing (p 45) "the spring like a corpse was sweet with the smell of doom," (p 54) "the telephone presented nothing but the silent open mouth of somebody found dead," and (p 145) "his answers fell like trees across the road," and plenty of thought-provoking talk on theology. The End of the Affair is an outstanding story about love, hate, relationships, and religion. Also good: The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham, and Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.

*spoilers*

Oh my, this book started out so well but then just crashed and burned.

Sarah and Maurice, the star-crossed lovers, aren't particularly likeable characters. Maurice is a jealous stalker who hires a private detective to find out who has replaced him in Sarah's affections. While he's not likeable at least he's realistic. Sarah is more of enigma. She is very free with her favours despite the fact that she's married to Henry. We assume there must be more to her character than meets the eye and perhaps some tragic or compelling reason she can't leave her boring husband. Turns out that she's just too weak to make the break and thinks it's more noble to carry on betraying him while pretending to love him.

One night in the middle of the blitz Maurice is almost killed and Sarah breaks off the affair abruptly, leaving him heartbroken. When he sees her again two years later he still hasn't shaken off the hold she has over him and he becomes consumed with finding out who she is having her latest affair with. Things are shaping up very nicely and it seems Sarah is hiding a secret that could explain all when Maurice manages to get his hands on her diary from the time they were together. Then the plot takes a huge nose dive.

Turns out Sarah didn't stop loving him at all, she loved him so much she was willing to sacrifice herself for him. Yep. When Sarah thought he was dead after the bombing she made a pact with God (who she didn't really believe in), that if he spared Maurice's life she'd stop seeing him. This is couched in the most childish drivel I've ever read, turning Sarah from an intriguing character into an irrational, superstitious moron. Greene obviously had a very high opinion of women. Not only does she destroy any chance of happiness for herself and Maurice, but when she goes out walking in the rain and catches a terrible chill, complete with hacking cough that is mentioned numerous times, she inexplicably refuses to see a doctor until it's too late. This is all supposed to be deep and philosophical and tragic but for me it was just ridiculous and inauthentic. I reached the end of my patience about tow-thirds of the way in and gave up. It's a shame because I like the way Greene writes, but I don't think I'll be reading anymore of his Catholic novels

I love that Colin Firth reads this book. The story itself was just okay. I think I would give it a higher rating if the ending hadn't gone on forever! About 2/3 of the way through this it could have been ended and I would have been happy. I didn't get much from the final 1/3 and found it quite boring and it felt like it was just being dragged on and on....

The British author Graham Greene is one of those authors who helped define the novel as an art form during the 20th Century. The span of his life, from 1904 to 1991, also enabled him to use that art form to trace the course of the changing life of Britons and of the United Kingdom across the length of that century. He was also one of those rare authors who was both good and popular and successful in his own lifetime.

These are all reasons why as a college graduate, man of the world naïf I avoided reading much of his body of work then and over the years since. I only recently picked up "The End of the Affair" because of a number of non-fiction accounts of the Second World War described the novel as a "semi-autobiographical" account of Graham Greene's own actual affair with Lady Catherine Walston, wife of a British government official. The dedication in the original editions did dedicate the book to "C" while later versions actually spelled out Catherine.

While many of Greene's works are described as taking place in a dark setting either in the criminal underworld are found right along its edge, "The End of the Affair" takes place in a much more recognizable world though no less not-normal world of Britain before, during, and after the Second World War. Its three principal characters are novelist Maurice Bendrix, his lover Sarah Miles, and Sarah's husband Miles. It is, I suspect, entirely possible for a reader to discover a preference for only one part of Greene's body of work based upon the differing themes and settings of his novels, although the appeal of his clean and disciplined writing style might be enough to carry me through just about any of his works.

As I allowed the author's prose to carry me forward, I recognized that it was exactly the sort of thing I would have rejected as unrealistic and perhaps even mawkish if I had opened it while at university or shortly after entering the working world. However, the succeeding years of personal and derived experiences told me now that in fact this was an impressively un-mawkish and realistic account of how love and its complications can affect people, their perceptions, their actions, and their interactions. (I've always wondered if in fact Face book shouldn't offer just the one option under "Relationship" of "It's Complicated" as being the most realistic and reasonable statement on human personal interactions). This is a story of love and all of its complications and how that love and those complications impact upon the lives of lovers, wives, husbands, and others.

The autobiographical aspects of the novel were very evident even from the little information I had on the author's life from the books I noted above. This added depth to the story as I could see where Greene drew directly upon his own life in presenting this story. There are some elements towards the end that clearly reflect other aspects of his own life, including his religious views, but I won't rehash these in order to avoid presenting any spoilers to a first time reader of the novel. However, I will note that these were not all as fully convincing for me personally as the presentation of the main story line, despite their relationship and contribution to that central theme.

Whatever you do, do not read the book descriptions - they give away the secret key to the story. (Shame on them!) The beauty of this novel is how Greene takes you in so that you think you are reading about a run of the mill love affair and then, when you finally understand, it is so very deep and spiritual. I actually quit reading it, thinking it sort of sordid, but went back when I read somewhere there was a deeper, spiritual side to the story. I'm really glad I did and really glad I hadn't read the book description so the meaning came as an unexpected gift. The audible version is read by Colin Firth - he must also have loved the novel to take the time to do this. It's great and also highly recommended.

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.

This melding of lust, love, and theology joins the short list of the best novels I've ever read (a list heavily populated by Graham Greene). If you haven't yet read this title, I discourage you from over-reading reviews on it which might give away the details of the story and ruin it for you. There are plenty of twists and surprises. Plenty of memorable quotes and bittersweet moments.

This is a story set in the WWII London suburbs and narrates a tangled adulterous situation involving: a bachelor author, a semi-important government bureaucrat and his wife, an atheist streetpreacher, a priest, a private-eye, and GOD (in an active role). Sounds like a formula for boredom. IT IS NOT.

I found the first few pages to be a little complex and a bit difficult to follow . . . Graham Greene seemed to be self-indulging in full-blown British prose with maximum decorum and complexity. It quickly settled down in to a hard-to-put-down and easy-to-read, superbly thoughtful and intelligent short novel in which Greene wrings the essence out of the most vital human emotions - love, hate, lust jealousy, pity, sense of duty, fear of God. This work deals keenly with the most difficult subjects that we (as humans) muddle around in. Some of the fleshly aspects are quite sensual but, in the style of Graham Greene, never pruient.

The back cover of the Pocket Books paperback copy that I read quotes the great William Faulkner, commenting on The End of the Affair, "For me, one of the best, most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody's language". Me too. Highly recommended.

Written in four parts, this book commences with the "affair" proceeds in part two to the "end", enlightens you in part three by reading "her" diary, and ends with Greek-tragedy-like conclusion which assuredly will put any reader to tears. Greene manipulates the heart's strings in this novel as well as any other by his hand.

Centering upon the view of protagonist Maurice Bendrix - called almost always as Bendrix - we learn of a peculiar love triangle between he and pal Henry Miles and Henry's wife Sarah. Nothing fantastically complicated occurs. People outgrow one another during a classic WW II and post war marriage between two British thirty-somethings. In a time and land when divorce was less acceptable, the alterative was an "affair." So the title.

Miscommunication abounds, and largely because of a communication with God. The threesome evolves from the Miles and Bendrix to Bendrix, Sarah and God. And, then the issue becomes: whose God? The uncommitted version, the Protestant, or the forbidding Catholic. The end delves with a funeral rite of being either simple or Catholic - with family and friends discussing or even feuding about which would have been the choice of the deceased who exercised no formal religion during life. Like "Brideshead Revisitied", this theme emanates to a great verbal brawl and religion actually aggravates sores as opposed to providing cure.

In the end, Bendrix is so disillusioned that he proclaims, "Never again would I be able to enjoy a woman without love?" Or is he merely growing up?

But, Bendrix also resolutely admits, "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." A man of uncertain belief in the almighty, the once agnostic has to admit to God's existence in order to be upset and angry at Him for what was wrought upon Bendrix.

The time of the novel is important in understanding these concepts. This may be a product of its time. The novel was written when Mao and Stalin aggressively challenged religion and most religious beliefs. Literally billions of people were subjected to governmentally induced programs of disbelief, while disbelieving Bendrix freely elected to believe under the most arduous of situations. And, perhaps all are sad.

Written in British style, the novel is not as complicated as predecessor authors - Waugh, Forster,. . . many of whom are mentioned in this novel. Greene uses a clean and crisp style -- which more purely depicts scenes than American impressionists Hemingway and his progeny -- and his book moves quickly and effortlessly with only an occasional accent of flowery prose. Greene's sophisitcation stealthily sneaks past the reader -- proof of the genius of the writer.

The End of the Affair has Graham Green's trademark brevity. Short sentences. Short chapters. Simple narrative. Deep insight. The chief protagonist is a writer Bendrix who has an affair with Sarah, the wife of a civil servant, Henry. One day Sarah stops meeting Bendrix. Two years later, Bendrix comes in contact with Henry and comes to know of Henry's suspicion about his wife having an affair. Driven by jealousy and hate, Bendrix hires a detective, Parkis to investigate Sarah and her affair.

As the novel progresses, we come face to face with Bendrix's love and hate for Sarah and the jealousy and risk that such an affair involves. A strange camaraderie between Parkis and Brendix as well as Brendrix and Henry is the highlight of the story. In many ways, the novel is also a story about the belief and disbelief in God, a question all protagonists face in their own way. The novel weaves a complex and very heartfelt story of adultery and hate, interspersed with romance without sentimentality, and spiritual contexts without the need for discourse.

Since the protagonist Maurice Bendrix is a writer, the novel has an erudite and expert discourse on art of novel as the backdrop. The ideas about craftsmanship, inspiration, need to have first hand experiences and information, the fickle fame or lack of it, monetary hardships, the drudgery of writing as a daily task and the humane side of author are all explored as an undercurrent.

The End of the Affair is a great read for it manages to convey so many aspects of human relationships and how the emotions evolve and inter-mesh with rational and irrational events and emotions. It is a great book about the nature of atheist and how a belief system knocks at his door in times of guilt, sorrow, melancholy, love or the inexplicable. It is as much a story of bonding and unbonding between people brought together by the carnal needs, as is a story of men joined together by shared pain and memories. The heroine Sarah is very likable, the writer Bendrix is very believable, Parkis is unforgettable and entertaining and Henry is a nicely crafted character. The book is fairly short in length and is recommended for all it encompasses.

This is not a book that can be forgotten. Introduced to me by a dear friend, this was my first Graham Greene book, and one that made my heart ache and my soul long, and my mind wander... and had that effect for long after I finished. Greene knows how to talk about pain, jealousy, regret, passion, and does so in a way that is patient, but provocative. In a book so short, it is vast and deep and satisfying in all the right ways.

Upon reaching the last page, I noticed a small detail I may have otherwise dismissed: the story fills up the whole book, the last words finishing on the back of the last physical page. A seemingly insignificant and silly detail that with any other book, I may not have thought anything of it. In this story, though, in a special way I found the absence of blank unused pages to be appropriate. The story was there- real, and beautiful, living, moving, passionate, painful, and then, suddenly it ends. Up until the very last page all of those things are there in the words of the story and then when it is done it is gone. There is not any more, nor the possibilities of anything more.

As Greene writes in the first sentence (and quite possibly the moment I fell in love with The End of the Affair), "A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead." I am so thankful this story found me, and will keep it close for many years to come.

Greene's introspective novel relates the personal anguish and the interplay among the characters in an intensely romantic triangle. Set in postwar London this story chronicles the desperate love affair between Maurice Bendrix--a jealous novelist--and Sarah Miles, the wife of a mild-manned civil servant. Readers must judge if she is faithful to her lover or too free with her body and her heart, for such painful issues torment the protagonist.
Unfolding in greater intimacy through
the use of the first person, THE END OF THE AFFAIR is not written in strict chronological order. We bounce between the present and war-torn London, with little literary help as to the time frame. The author even presents one scene from the perspective of both characters. Also several chapters consist of diary entries, which serve to clarify--or further confuse--the past for the tormented novelist.
Bendrix is somewhat passive, though he can be goaded into action, especially when it comes to playing the sleuth about Sarah's latest affair. It is naive, trusting Henry, however, who seems content to suffer in silence. Through curious twists of fate the two men--once rivals--bond over Sarah against the true common enemy: God. While not overtly religious this novel reflects a strong undercurrent of the Man versus God conflict. What did Sarah really want in the end? How best can her adoring men respect her wishes?
After having made a desperate vow to God to spare Maurice's life, Sarah is torn between resentment
of God (for denying her feminine fulfillment in the desert of her life), and a secret desire for spiritual intimacy with her creator. Can a childhood baptism into Catholicism suddenly "take" decades later? Why was she seeing both a priest and an atheist on the sly? How long can Bendrix maintin his disgust for the greatest passion of his life, whom he has never gotten over? The battle for Sarah's heart is pursued vehemently
by the two former rivals--who are adamant about what they consider best for her. Is this a novel about revenge or religious vindication, with its love-hate motif, inextricably interwoven between illicit courtship and foiled schemes? Just what are the limits of our responsibility to those whom we profess to love until death? This modern classic proves a captivating, thought-provoking read.

A Catholic friend of mine recommended this book as a quick but wonderful weekend read. Although the book is clearly titled "The End of the Affair," I little anticipated what I was getting into. Indeed, this book explores the winding down of a passionate affair between Bendrix (your main narrator) and Mrs. Sarah Miles. As much as I favor modern British literature, reading a tormented, neurotic man's twisted thoughts was not exactly my idea of a great weekend read. For the first half of the book, I greatly doubted my friend's reading recommendations.
However, like in "Till We Have Faces," I found the second half of the book more than justified the first half's wanderings. Greene uses much of the first half of the book to set the stage; he introduces the main characters, their incredibly complex relations, and their current miseries. In light of the second half of the book, I have a heightened appreciation of the first half.
This understood, the thing I truly admire in the first part is Greene's ability and willingness to capture how multi-faceted our feelings towards others often are. Novelists often tritely portray a woman's husband and her lover as bitter enemies; Greene does no such thing. Love and hate are always shown as polar opposites, but Greene shows how they are two sides of the same coin. Bendrix (and thus Greene) dwells on the characters' glaring flaws of jealousy, passivity, hypocrisy, infidelity, and vast emptiness, and yet a careful reader is able to discern that these characters are truly good. I have no idea how he does this except for the sympathy that comes from extreme transparency.
I don't want to give away what happens towards the end; indeed, it is so complex that I don't know that I could relate it if I tried. However, as mentioned in other reviews, there is essentially a gravitational pull towards God despite the fact that none of the characters really believe in God. This book is in no way preachy as nothing - and I mean NOTHING - is preached to the reader as to how he should think, feel or believe. The author simply shows that through all the swirl of action and emotion, the one thing that continues to make sense is the existence and love of God. And the presence of this God suddenly hallows the characters that you instinctively knew were good all along.
Greene's exploration and approach to such faith are completely brand new to me. He might have a distinct Catholic perspective or he might just revel in God's love for the realistically sinful man. Either way, I was left at the end with a strong sense that Greene was a master craftsman. He was such a craftsman that I didn't catch on to how he pulled off all he was able to pull off by the end. It's been awhile since I've read such a truly well-written masterpiece, and I am thankful to have read this one.

The narrator, Maurice Bendrix, purports to hate Henry Miles and his wife Sarah at the time he happens to run into Miles. It is 1946. Bendrix and Miles had not seen each other since June 1944.

Henry Miles is a civil servant. He was an Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Pensions. Later he was moved to the Ministry of Home Security. At his request Maurice follows Henry to his house. Henry is worried about Sarah.

Sarah and Maurice Bendrix had been out of contact for eighteen months. The affair between the two had begun in 1939. When Sarah gets in touch with him after his meeting with Miles, Bendrix is elated. (He has just arranged with a private detective to have Sarah followed. Henry expressed to Maurice a sense of unease.) Well, that is the set up. The writing is sensitive, nuanced. Sarah had refused to leave Henry for Bendrix.

Eventually, in 1946, Henry sees that Bendrix and Sarah had been lovers. In current parlance, Maurice accuses Henry of enabling the liaison. The book embodies Graham Greene's sincere embrace of Roman Catholicism in the 1940's. Much of the plot and the themes of the novel turn on the religious and spiritual understanding of the characters.

Sarah Miles berates herself for having no trust in love. What vows, what promises must be kept to God and to man Sarah wonders. This is her dilemma, the dilemma of a fundamentally good person. Further developments of this excellent story I leave to the reader to discover.

God - particularly in his Roman Catholic emanation - is never far offstage in "Greeneland", as critics have dubbed the fictional landscape of Graham Greene, England's greatest novelist of the 20th century. (It is a disgrace he never won the Nobel Prize for Literature.)
Thus we have in this story set against the background of London during World War II not just your normal love triangle - hapless husband, frustrated wife, passionate lover - but also a fourth player to complete the love *quadrilateral* - God, the other apparent "suitor" of the wife.
In other words, we have in this book a traditional love triangle inside a most untraditional love quadrilateral. In assessing the book we should ask how well the author has evoked both of these character configurations.
The love triangle is utterly convincing - indeed, the passions and practices of the lovers (he is a writer) strongly suggest a foundational event not in literature but in life.
As for the love quadrilateral - the reader in Greeneland must acclimate himself or herself to this environment, fused as it is with Catholicism. Some will welcome it, others will be put off by it. Personally I think Greene pulls it off brilliantly. He makes the reader care - deeply - about the religious questions (not answers) which are at the core of the story. This is no mean feat; it would be so easy to be preachy and sententious. Greene, however, is neither of these; his sense of religion's role (if any) in human life is rooted in a deep and forgiving compassion for the sinner and his or her ways.
A final word about the new movie version of this book - it is faithful to the story until near the end when the movie adds invented material concerning a post-affair affair. However in the end it returns to the material of the book. If you have not seen the movie, read the book first. And when the story evokes that love quadrilateral on top of what seemed to be a semple love triangle, take out your roadmaps: you are in Greeneland now.

Graham Greene's work is known to be very thrilling in a most subtle way. "The end of the affair" isn't different.
Told in first-person point of view, this is the story of Maurice Bendrix, a not so successful writer, Sarah, his lover and the great love of his life, and Henry, Sarah's husband. The relationship among this threesome is very complex, with most interesting and well developed characters.
Setted during and after the second world war, Bendrix's life suddenly looses all meaning when Sarah stops seeing him out of nowhere. During the book, Bedrix discovers why Sarah left him, and develops a most unusual relationship with Henry. This story is also about belief and memory connected. What happens when someone you love is no longer with you? Is it possible that him/her is watching the ones left behind, hearing their thoughts, and helping them? What happens when you don't believe in anything about religion, and then you loose someone very dear to you? What do you believe in then, when there's proof everywhere that this someone is still connected to you? Or is it just one's imagination? These are some of the questions this book puts on a reder's mind. Reading the book one has to stop after a few pages and wonder what one would do if the story was personal. More than good fiction, "The end of the affair" is a novel that has a meaning and a purpose.
This is one of the best of Greene's works, along with "The third man". The movie was also excellent, as almost every movie featuring Ralph Fiennes or Julianne Moore.
Grade 8.9/10

This summer, I have, very fortunately, had the opportunity to discover the novels of Graham Greene. There isn't enought that I can say about how wonderful those novels I've read are. Without doubt, they, and especially The End of the Affair, will stay with me the rest of my life.
This novel's plot is simple, but the thought behind it is complex. It deals with a bizarre love triangle between Bendrix, Sarah, and God. In the novel, Sarah and Bendrix have had a long-term adulterous affair, and they have truly been in love. Suddenly though, and without warning, Sarah leaves Bendrix. Bendrix's reactions is complex. He is convinced that it was another man, but later events show that Sarah left him because she has begun to believe in God, and she has had to choose between her convictions and Bendrix.
I don't think that I've given away too much of the plot (at least no more than anyone else has) because the study of the unique moral situation is so complex and detailed. The novel does have so much to say. It comments on the nature and price of faith. Greene is also concerned with the similarities between love and hate and the relationship between intense emotional pain, hate, and belief in God. The characterizations are all so complete as each character stuggles to believe in God and struggles with what emotions they should feel towards God. Greene speaks to so many aspects of human nature. It's a very rare thing to find a novel so powerful and thought provoking.

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.

Two men love a single woman (Sarah). Her husband (Henry) is the first man, but he isn't much of a lover. Her lover (Bendrix) is the second, but he isn't much of a man. The story is told from the POV of Bendrix and he goes on about how much he hates everything. Sarah left him and he's hurt to no end. Bendrix imagines all of the other men she is now seeing, and it makes him mad with rage. As the book unfolds, we learn that every ounce of Bendrix' hate was once measured by an equal amount of passionate love for Sarah. Maybe the natural end of a jealous foolish lover, but the book is really about a whole lot more.
Specifically, the book is about the power of God and the argument of whether God actually touches and influences our lives or whether he sits on the sidelines idly. Most of the characters in the book don't believe in God or violently try to disbelieve. They cling to the notion that God can neither be proved nor disproved. As the book progresses, Greene puts his characters into subtle situations that show the hand of God in their lives. The characters do all they can to cling to the rationalism that will explain it all away. Sarah feels the real spirit of God, but she wants to disprove him to enjoy life. Henry is just plain rational and unromantic, he doesn't see anything. Bendrix is a flame of passion and he comes to hate God for all of his troubles, while refusing to admit his existence.
Oddities occur and are uneasily explained away by Bendrix as mere coincidences. The result is that the reader is challenged to examine the unexplainable situations in their own lives. How many times has something happened to us that we've belittled that may have had a divine origin? Greene has done a tremendous job using beautiful writing and characters to make us examine ourselves.
This was my first attempt at reading Greene, and I would recommend it as a good first choice. It's relatively short, and it can also be read in conjunction with viewing the well-done 1999 film of the same name.

Maurice Bendrix, a writer in WWII London, becomes obsessed with learning the reason a married woman, Sarah Miles, broke off her love affair with him. She never explained, and he feels there must be another man. When he gets his hands on her diary, he will learn how profoundly Sarah's world changed on the day a bomb struck the building they were occupying, and his own world will be shaken as well.

This is the last of Graham Greene's overtly Catholic novels, and it is fascinating. Although I found Sarah's abrupt conversion unconvincing (the same problem I had when I saw the film adaptation several years ago), I was quickly won over as the consequences played out. Religious faith places a terrible burden on the faithful, and Greene often describes it as if it were some form of infection. Many Christians say that accepting God will improve one's life here on earth, but in Greene's world, believers often endure terrible suffering and loneliness, not only for the purpose of earning a better life after death, but also out of gratitude to God as creator. The torments that Sarah and Maurice undergo are terribly moving and illustrate how one may love God and hate Him, too.

It takes an extraordinary work of fiction to move me to such extremes as to read it more than once. This novel is a rare jewel containing prose so HONEST and agonizingly beautiful that my heart just aches with emotion the whole voyage through.
It's written in first person (which I adore) by a tortured character named Bendrix, who, after an ardent love affair with Sarah-a married woman, seeks out two years later to learn why she so unexpectedly ended it. What he doesn't know is that her reasons were entirely selfless and undesired since it was, in fact, a pact with God which forced her to leave him. "I tempted Fate and Fate accepted" she writes in her diary, which Bendrix later discovers and all his questions are then answered--with a price of course.
Set during WWII London, this powerful and poignant story gives us two lovers who are so consumed by their passion for one another, they are willing to destroy themselves and defy destiny for as long as they can. After all, what good is a life without love? At one point Sarah convinces herself that "Love doesn't end just because we don't see each other" but eventually realizes that isn't enough and for that 'greed' they are then doomed anyway.
Read this for an intense emotional impact, for a hope of understanding a higher power, or just to revel in a writing that makes obsession and jealousy so darkly delicious.

Relationships are complicated. Extremely complicated. People in relationships often think they know all aspects of it, until they are made aware that they know very little.
The story begins in London, during World War II. Bendrix has an ongoing adulterous affair with Sarah, a married woman. Bendrix and Sarah's relationship is passionate, fiery, seething. Sarah's relationship with her husband, Henry, is steadfast, constant, dispassionate. When Bendrix is caught in a bombing in his building, . Sarah panics and makes a deal with God to leave Bendrix forever if God would only spare his life. Bendrix lived and Sarah left him without explanation. Bendrix feared the worst - another man - and is consumed by the quest to learn the specifics.

Through the whole story, the reader is always aware of Sarah's motivations, even while Bendrix is clueless. Knowing the reason why, however, does not at all detract from going along with Bendrix in his search for the truth. When Bendrix rages and seethes, you want to scream at him that all his suspicions are unfounded. Bendrix takes you through all the pain and doubt and anger at his lost love until he discovers the truth and, hopefully, finds relief and release.

This story shows that love can be consuming, obsessive, wasteful. It also shows that love can be unbending, rigorous, unchangeable. Graham Greene always brings back the discussion about relationships to one of faith in God. Graham Greene makes several parallels between human love and love of God. Whether you're religious or not, it isn't difficult to understand this book and draw lessons from it.

My third Graham Greene read, after The Third Man and Ministry of Fear, took some conviction to sit down to: I was convinced that my viewing the movie 10(ish) years ago would ruin the reading experience for me.

In fact, when I reached what I remembered to be the big "secret" of the movie (the "vow"), I was only halfway through the book.

Of course, this implies that the book is entirely plot-centric, which is not at all the case. The book uses its plot admirably to reveal its characters' conflicting belief systems, which turn out to be at least as central to the story as the eponymous "affair". A particularly compelling portion of the story--the portion which signals the transition from introspective romance to something greater--is revealed through the eyes of a character who thrives on contradictions.

Neither of the protagonists seem like individuals one would wish to know well, but their portraits are fascinating and exceedingly real. The man's irrational jealousies and the woman's awareness of her own contradicticary nature struck the most compelling chord with me, making them more than just characters.

My only minor complaint would be that portions of the last quarter of the book lost steam, though even that was eventually rectified through perseverance.

Graham Greene has his charectors soliloquy with God. Here we have Maurice Bendrix, the narrator of the story, who is in love with Sara Miles. They both converse with God just like Major Scobie did in "The Heart of the Matter" with equally devastating outcome. Sara is married to Henry and is stuck in a loveless, sexless union, falls in love with the famous writer, Maurice. In the funniest scene, jeu d'es.prit, where Henry confesses to Maurice about his doubts regarding Sara's fidelity and wants to have a detective follow her. Actually it is Mauruce who hires Mr. Parkis and procures Sara's dairy. After he realizes her true love for him, he runs to claim her and take her away from Henry. But-----, if life were that simple. Sara, during Blitz, prays to God, if He would save Bendrix life, then she would give him up for ever. It is the tug of war between faith and love, a dichotomy which really consumes her. Maurice, who is the most human of all charectors in the book, shows, envy, jealousy, love, friendship, and faith or lack of it. Greene always has his women pure and loving and men display petty jealousy.
Great insight into humar consciousness and duty to God. A wonderful read.

This book was mesmerizing in its discussions of love and philosophy and religion. It begins as a story of a jealous ex-lover hiring a private eye to determine whether his beloved has taken up with someone new. However, as Bendrix begins to discover things he didn't know about the woman he loved he begins to contemplate the nature of their love and the nature of both of their relationships with God. As someone who has never though much about God or religion I was astonished at how deeply this book burrowed beneath my cynical shell to cause me to contemplate the importance of having a relationship with God. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a love story that is not only about the obsessive, physical love between a man and a woman, but also the love between a woman and her God.

If you love ironic endings and twists, even at the expense of the narrator, you will love The End of the Affair. I dare not reveal to you what leads to Morris screaming at God "Leave me alone forever!", but when you reach that sentence you will have passed through a truly amazing examination of two people in adultery, based on love for one party and on dessicated lust for the other. You will see Miracles as they might have happened in this century. You will also witness the stubbornness of some who have been their beneficiaries.
Though you may not believe in God, (I am an agnostic) you can hardly resist taking the side of Faith under Greene's guidance. That is his genius: whether he writes tragedy or comedy, Greene's mastery of irony appears to draw you to great truths. You need not be a Catholic to appreciate the God who enters the lives of Morris and Sarah. Even when punishing the wicked, Greene's God loves and possesses an irresistable sense of humor.
This is a book that I recommend happily to anyone, if for no other reason than to get a sense of a witty, sensible Catholicism that few outsiders understand. Skip the film. Read the book.

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.

Graham Greene's novel works upon so many levels. Perhaps most compelling to my mind is how starkly he portrays (as is typical for his style) the moral dilemma confronted by Sarah. Believing that her lover, Maurice Bendrix, was killed in a bombing raid, she drops to her knees and prays that if God spares his life, she shall forsake Bendrix. Bendrix is spared, and Sarah then is forced to confront her end of the bargain, which she finds to be an unbearable weight, and thereby breaks it. Though the choices are portrayed in the starkest of terms, Greene nonetheless imparts a beautiful sensitivity to his novel. Sarah, Maurice, and Sarah's husband are all strikingly human, all forced into a series of dilemmas by their prior decisions made generally upon only rash impulse.
In this work, Greene again seeks to write almost for cinematic adaptation; the development he achieves upon multiple levels with a comparative economy of words is striking. In sum, this is both a literarily pleasing book and a deeply affecting story...a moral parable even.

More than any Graham Greene novels I have read, The End of the Affair successfully combines a tale of passionate and adulterous love with religious issues. These are difficult themes and in the brilliant hands of Mr Greene, we have an intelligent and sensitive novel that is beautifully written. Greene creates a small cast of characters who are trapped in their own desires - Bendrix's love for Sarah, a source of joy and hurt, hope and disappointment, and ultimately despair ; her search for rationality in the consequences of her own faith and the sad fate that has befallen her; and Henry's ideal of a solid marriage as a foundation of his ambitious career, a love perhaps but one devoid of passion and sharing. As always, Greene writes with economy of description - succint and precise yet almost perfect in conveying every scene, thought and feeling. The novel provides no answers nor does it contain any obvious message but the intelligent treatment of the various subjects and the wonderful writing makes this another literary gem by one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

Greene was inspired by Ford Madox Ford's masterpiece of 1915, The Good Soldier, when he wrote The End of the Affair in 1951. Ford called his 'the saddest story', and indeed, Greene's work is nearly as sad.
The love-story between Bendrix and Sarah is told in weaving, unchronological prose, moving from past to future, rarely staying in the present. As Bendrix loses Sarah, in the end, not to husband Henry, but to God, Bendrix's bitterness is firmly compounded, and the sadness of this story is not just the death of a lover, but the death of Bendrix's hope. There are hints at the end of the novel that Bendrix, who finally acknowledges God in his very hatred of Him, will come to share the faith that made Sarah's last days of life make some sense. But this is questionable.
I strongly recommend this book to readers who likes Greene's detective fiction and his entertainments, but who crave a thinner book with a thicker theme. It should be noted that the novel should be taken more seriously than the recent film made of the book, directed by Neil Jordan. While Jordan's film was beautiful to watch, and the acting superb, the story was altered almost unrecognisably towards the end, and the assumption on the part of Jordan that the book was really about Greene and his mistress (Catherine Walston), coloured the film and destroyed much of its authenticity.
Like all of Greene's works, this novel is largely problematic in theological terms, but as Greene works with paradoxes and rarely in terms of black and white, this is what we have come to expect, and love.

If you love ironic endings and twists, even at the expense of the narrator, you will love The End of the Affair. I dare not reveal to you what leads to Morris screaming at God "Leave me alone forever!", but when you reach that sentence you will have passed through a truly amazing examination of two people in adultery, based on love for one party and on dessicated lust for the other. You will see Miracles as they might have happened in this century. You will also witness the stubbornness of some who have been their beneficiaries.
Though you may not believe in God, (I am an agnostic) you can hardly resist taking the side of Faith under Greene's guidance. That is his genius: whether he writes tragedy or comedy, Greene's mastery of irony appears to draw you to great truths. You need not be a Catholic to appreciate the God who enters the lives of Morris and Sarah. Even when punishing the wicked, Greene's God loves and possesses an irresistable sense of humor.
This is a book that I recommend happily to anyone, if for no other reason than to get a sense of a witty, sensible Catholicism that few outsiders understand. Skip the film. Read the book.

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.

Graham Greene's novel works upon so many levels. Perhaps most compelling to my mind is how starkly he portrays (as is typical for his style) the moral dilemma confronted by Sarah. Believing that her lover, Maurice Bendrix, was killed in a bombing raid, she drops to her knees and prays that if God spares his life, she shall forsake Bendrix. Bendrix is spared, and Sarah then is forced to confront her end of the bargain, which she finds to be an unbearable weight, and thereby breaks it. Though the choices are portrayed in the starkest of terms, Greene nonetheless imparts a beautiful sensitivity to his novel. Sarah, Maurice, and Sarah's husband are all strikingly human, all forced into a series of dilemmas by their prior decisions made generally upon only rash impulse.
In this work, Greene again seeks to write almost for cinematic adaptation; the development he achieves upon multiple levels with a comparative economy of words is striking. In sum, this is both a literarily pleasing book and a deeply affecting story...a moral parable even.

More than any Graham Greene novels I have read, The End of the Affair successfully combines a tale of passionate and adulterous love with religious issues. These are difficult themes and in the brilliant hands of Mr Greene, we have an intelligent and sensitive novel that is beautifully written. Greene creates a small cast of characters who are trapped in their own desires - Bendrix's love for Sarah, a source of joy and hurt, hope and disappointment, and ultimately despair ; her search for rationality in the consequences of her own faith and the sad fate that has befallen her; and Henry's ideal of a solid marriage as a foundation of his ambitious career, a love perhaps but one devoid of passion and sharing. As always, Greene writes with economy of description - succint and precise yet almost perfect in conveying every scene, thought and feeling. The novel provides no answers nor does it contain any obvious message but the intelligent treatment of the various subjects and the wonderful writing makes this another literary gem by one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

Greene was inspired by Ford Madox Ford's masterpiece of 1915, The Good Soldier, when he wrote The End of the Affair in 1951. Ford called his 'the saddest story', and indeed, Greene's work is nearly as sad.
The love-story between Bendrix and Sarah is told in weaving, unchronological prose, moving from past to future, rarely staying in the present. As Bendrix loses Sarah, in the end, not to husband Henry, but to God, Bendrix's bitterness is firmly compounded, and the sadness of this story is not just the death of a lover, but the death of Bendrix's hope. There are hints at the end of the novel that Bendrix, who finally acknowledges God in his very hatred of Him, will come to share the faith that made Sarah's last days of life make some sense. But this is questionable.
I strongly recommend this book to readers who likes Greene's detective fiction and his entertainments, but who crave a thinner book with a thicker theme. It should be noted that the novel should be taken more seriously than the recent film made of the book, directed by Neil Jordan. While Jordan's film was beautiful to watch, and the acting superb, the story was altered almost unrecognisably towards the end, and the assumption on the part of Jordan that the book was really about Greene and his mistress (Catherine Walston), coloured the film and destroyed much of its authenticity.
Like all of Greene's works, this novel is largely problematic in theological terms, but as Greene works with paradoxes and rarely in terms of black and white, this is what we have come to expect, and love.

Greene's "The End of the Affair" encompasses a number of interesting themes within its touching story. Maurice Bendrix is a protagonist whose profession as a writer is his license for a skillful and honest account of himself. Greene covers Bendrix's views on the art/job of writing, interwoven with the larger themes of adultery and spirituality.

Bendrix's love for Sarah, a married woman, is depicted with honesty and frankness, as he is unashamed to profess the selfishness that is his worst fault and enemy. It is refreshing to see a main character who describes his distaste, disregard and pity for the characters who surround him, and Greene makes no mistake about the many flaws his Bendrix possesses. Greene also examines the fine line between love and hate, and makes a number of important observations about the nature of jealousy and human love.

The added dimension which makes the novel stand out from pure love stories is its focus on spirituality. Sarah appears to have been destined to be a Catholic, and as Bendrix notes the apparently coincidental events in her life, he starts to reconsider his own view of the God he refuses to believe in. Greene doesn't make any clear cut decisions about where his characters end up, which is nice to find, and leaves the questions in the mind of the reader.

If you have seen the movie with Ralph Fiennes, then you have a fairly good understanding of the plot, characters, and story. Much of it was taken almost word for word from the book. The book's focus is not only about the characters' love, but about a meditation on the existence of God. All else in this World War II drama is working to support that thesis.
In the book, the supposed lover in the story (the fourth wheel?) has a larger part in this story as a philosophical dissenter who argues against the existence of God. He is the one with the skin affliction and is involved in the miraculous event. By the end of the novel, Bendrix and he are confronted with proof that they cannot refute. Thus, the novel ends with an acknowledgement that God exists.
If this sounds like an overtly religious novel, I would say it isn't. All though the presence of God is a large part of it, this is still a good story and I would recommend reading it.

The inspiration for this novel might have come from a long time affair Greene had with his Goddaughter, Lady Catherine Walton. She refused to leave her husband for him because of her faith. Greene was of course, a Catholic convert and although he was quite involved with his adopted church, he struggled with some degree of ambivalence toward it. Many of Greene's characters are engaged in tugs of war.

It would seem that, along with struggle, there is another thread woven into this story - the question of how much we can know about another person. We cannot possibly know it all, even about someone with whom we are especially intimate ... ourselves, for instance. In this case, we see Maurice, a man who really doesn't always understand himself much less his married lover, Sara.. He loves her madly, yet he can't see beyond his obsession with her and he is driving himself crazy with it. He has had a passionate affair with her that has been finished for two years when she suddenly comes back into his life.

Maurice isn't a very likeable character. He is in fact a grumpy, cantankerous, vindictive misanthrope, if you ask me. I found it both nerve wracking and fascinating to watch him struggle. Maurice is the very definition of jealous. He is like a ferret caught in a trap, ready to bite off his own tail. He seems jealous of the very air that Sara breathes. He is so crazy with jealousy until I wanted to slap him silly and then, oddly, I wanted to hug him and tell him to calm down and take a 'time out'. After all, jealousy is something we've all had to grapple with at one time or another.

There are other interesting characters in the story; a sweetly dim, inept private eye, a kind and gentle, cuckolded civil servant husband, a disfigured, quite sympathetic soapbox rationalist, and the heroine's lachrymose, petty swindling mother. But we spend much of our time within the head of Maurice. He is so caught up in himself and his own emotions, desires, ambivalencies, and obsessions that we don't learn too much about Sara until later in the story. But we have been watching her and clues have been popping up. Maurice is, of course, so wrapped up in his own rage and pain that he can't really see her. And she has a secret she isn't going to share with him. Ironically, the secret is something he couldn't see in spite of all his sleuthing and spying.

There is more than one struggle going on in this story; Maurice's battle with his lover's real or imagined suitors, his battle against religion, and of course, his battle with his own psyche. In the end his adversaries morph into one and he loses the fight. His hatred of God and faith finally capitulate in the end, but although he speaks to God it is with anger and weary resignation and brings him no peace. If that which we hate is also dependent on our love of it, he reasons, does he love God? I think he has reasoned himself into a corner.
Maugham seems to be arguing that we can only feel the emotion of hatred for things that are also worth the investment of our love. I wonder.

Graham Greene's classic "The End of the Affair" is a brilliantly layered story of love, jealously, hate, and faith - a fascinating glimpse into the author's guilt-ridden soul as he struggles with his own personal issues of adultery and religion. And as with most of Greene's work, despite the heavy moral undertone and literary craft, this is an easily read popular story that will appeal to mass audiences.

On the surface, this is the story told in the first person by Maurice Bendrix, a novelist of modest acclaim living in London in the years immediately following World War II. Bendrix pines over a love affair with Sarah Miles that ended abruptly and unsatisfactorily nearly two years before following a German air raid in which Maurice narrowly escaped death. As the novel begins, Sarah's husband, Henry, a colorless civil servant, confides in Bendrix that he believes his wife may currently be having an affair. Curious - and still wracked with jealously and despair - Bendrix engages the private detective agency referred to Henry, and sets out to track down Sarah's new lover.

Juxtaposed on this rather simple plot are complex issues regarding the Catholic Church, reflected through Sarah's struggles in a relationship with God that is even more convoluted than the love she feels for Bendrix - and the conflict that is later revealed - even as he struggles with insecurity and jealously. Clever sub-plotting and foreshadowing build the foundation for a well-executed core of the supernatural, a risky move that would be clumsy if tried by a less talented author, but rendered with subtlety and appropriate ambiguity by Greene's practiced hand.

In short, a remarkable novel, easily read and never forgettable - a story that will leave an indelible mark on your soul and remind you again why some books are rightfully "classics."

This book was a very interesting love story. It is a love story that fills you with sadness as you read it. Bendrix and Sarah are two people who are involved in a love affair with each other. Though Bendrix is a friend of Sarah's husband, Henry, that doesn't stop him from falling in love with her. The affair lasts for several years until a horrible accident forces Sarah to give Bendrix up.
The novel begins a couple of years after Sarah and Bendrix's last time to see each other. Over the months, Bendrix has had plenty of time to perfect his feelings of hate toward Sarah and Henry. His emotions take over when he finds that Sarah has another lover and he hires a detective to follow her around. The things that the detective uncovers make Bendrix rethink his feelings toward Sarah.
This is a book about love and hate and all other emotions in between. Green does a wonderful job of weaving this story together and making the characters come alive. It was a little hard to understand because there are so many jumps in time and it goes back and forth too much. But this affair isn't one of the trashy romances you would expect, but a story of two people in love and the circumstances that keep them apart.
I gave it 3 stars because I felt at times a little lost and confused about the events and when they were happening. Other than that, the plot is good, the characters are great, and the love story is thought provoking.

I decided to read this book before watching the film, but now I don't think I can bear to watch the film. Why? Because this was one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I have ever read, and I want to keep it as I remember it. His writing is simply mind blowing..Greene let's us peer into the minds of Bendrix and Sarah Miles, and let's us decide what is the truth. I expected a basic tragic love story,and it has turned out to be anything but basic. It is a complicated tale of many individuals struggling to "find themeselves" and to solidify their set of beliefs..whether it be about love, religion, faith, or hatred. It is a about a love that is so intense that it swings between the desire to destroy and to protect ( the pendulum that Sarah mentions...)Graham Greene's characters are some of the most fascinating in literature: Sarah Miles, Bendrix, Henry, Smythe...they are all consuming characters. It is almost written like a mystery; the reader keeps discovering the truth about each enigmatic personality. This is the perfect book to read on a rainy afternoon ( read it with a pencil! ); it is a short and brilliant read.

While most of the customer reviews for Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair are, as I had expected, positive, I noted quite a few negative ones as well. Perhaps some of the negative comments are from readers unaccustomed to the concept of the fallible narrator. Narration doesn't have to tell a story directly and protagonists don’t have to be agreeable or honest with the reader (or themselves, for that matter). Greene found a way to illuminate the greater truths of the heart through a first-person narrator who is very real and all too human. Riddled with pain, Bendrix leans on denial even as the truth pursues him like the cheap detective he employs.

Comments about the superficiality of the story or the characters are surprising, though. The End of the Affair is Greene’s most introspective book and it is peopled, from the principals to the bit players, with the most vivid characters he created. These characters, or the theme of spirituality and abnegation, may not resonate as much with a modern audience as it did when it was published, but it doesn't make the writing less than brilliant or the pain Greene conveys any less real.

A successful novel makes you feel what the protagonist is feeling, and Bendrix’s suffering is devastating. Whether or not you buy into Greene’s larger spiritual message shouldn’t really play into how much the story resonates. You don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate the elegant way Greene gets his theme across, and human suffering in the shadows of spirituality is a theme people of any (or no) faith can relate to. If you have experienced love and loss in your life, that should be enough to get something out of this lovely book. As an Agnostic, and one who tends to tune out overly proselytizing tracts, I think I identified all the more with Bendrix, and I appreciated Greene’s subtle handling of a delicate topic. All the more impressive that, with a narrator who mostly damns his ex-lover, Greene made me see that Sarah might be something truly unique, an extraordinary presence among the ordinary people in her life. That she loves someone as damaged as Bendrix, and loves so completely, is a reflection of the deep reservoir of love she has to give. That the reader sees Sarah’s grace so clearly through her own ordinary actions, and the often mundane and sometimes ugly backdrop of wartime England, and that Greene achieves this without fawning over his character, is quite a novelistic accomplishment.

But it is Bendrix who drives the book. How well the book will sit with the reader will depend on how much that reader sympathizes with the protagonist. Greene walks a fine line between presenting Bendrix as difficult and often fractious, realistically so given his lot in life, and at the same time generating empathy for him. Bendrix is not an attractive martyr but I found his peculiarities endearing, and the small kindnesses he shows despite his pain make him all the more sympathetic. The friendship that develops between Bendrix and his rival for Sarah’s affection, Henry, is very touching. Both men, realizing their ineffectuality against the greatest romantic rival of all, settle into first a truce, then a deep and comforting bond against a world that has wronged them. That Sarah's lasting impact insures that they can never get over her, and doesn't even allow them to remain isolated in a comfortable solitary misery is perhaps the saddest note the book hits. The End of the Affair is a relatively slim volume, but it’s not a quick read. The first time I read it I found the early part of Greene’s (Bendrix’s) prose circuitous and distracting. When I realized Greene was intentionally giving this voice to his distinctive protagonist, I began to settle into the book’s offbeat rhythm. It’s a novel meant for those who savor thoughtful narratives which leave questions that linger in the mind long after the last page is turned.

I’ve reread this book many times over the years and I actually logged on today to search the store for a Kindle edition. The End of the Affair is an under-appreciated masterpiece that certainly deserves one. After a successful and nicely handled film adaptation not so long ago (okay, about fifteen years), it’s curious that the publishers don’t recognize that there might be a digital market for it.

Greene's lean, unaffected style in "The End of the Affair." has clear plot lines with sharp prose emptied of modernist stylings. As he once admitted, the book has a cinematic feel. Greene is a writer who can show the heart of his characters without obtuse metaphor or over-description. His writing mines the internal life of his characters along with their emotional and spiritual turmoil which is juxtaposed on the harshness of ordinary life, in this case, the harh cinditionare wartime England. The interesting effect is that Greene's "realism" leads straight into the spiritual . . . demonstrating how human failings can act as the battered sign posts pointing the way out.

Sarah, Bendrix and Henry, the main characters in "End of the Affair" are a triangle of world-weariness and cynicism . . . Sarah, the love interest, searches for something her jealous lover, Bendrix and indifferent husband, Henry are not. Good feminist scrutiny of her plight is due, but it could be a forgone conclusion that had Sarah lived 30 years later, she would still have found herself searching. Bendrix, narrator of the book is an author and as such is so close to being Graham Greene's autobiograph, that the reader can't help experiencing the story as honing in to his personal truth, as far as may be borne in fictional proximity to an authos psyche. Bendrix's scourging, self-loathing narration, his uncompromising love for Sarah exalts in strange ways, even while his behavior can't. I recommend this book as a excellent study of an all-too-human entanglement.

Author Maurice Bendrix looks back on his war time affair with Sarah Miles after a chance meeting two years after she suddenly ended it for no reason Bendrix can fathom. His bitterness at its end and jealousies resurface turning into obsession. He hires a private detective to follow her and discovers a woman in turmoil, trying to reconcile her life with God....
Reputed to be based on Greene's own affair with Catherine Walston, 'The End of the Affair' centres on moral struggles within the human species,our need for redemption,the paradox of Gods world in which we need to know and experience hate and evil in order to know love and good.
Its fine as far as it goes, though perhaps a little dated and the symbolism of Sarah as a saint clunks. I'm against judging past sensibilities with todays (it just seems to lead to phoney self righteousness) but I recall reading a feminist critique on Greene's portrayal of women-Sarah in particular-and I can see its merit.She is more of a fantasy figure for Bendrix or Smythe etc than an individual female in her own right. (But this is just a debatable aside)
Greene has always irked me by having the compulsory Catholic in his stories and each time it is irrelevent weather the person is Catholic or not, even in a book like this which explores our relationship with God. Greene was a convert to Catholicism, and like all converts his new found faith has become his obsession and -like all converts- he brings it up in topic whenever he can,and, as I've said, it is always of the utmost irrelevence. I truly believe this almost perverted obsession is what cost Greene his chances of winning the Nobel prize. Compare-say-Isaac Bashevis Singer or Bernard Malamuds portrayals and musings on judaism or Amin Maalouf on islam and christianity and you realize how gratuitious Greene is.
A readable novel, well told and-in exploring a religious dilemma-ok up to a point.

Lacerating and lovely, this is as perfect a piece of writing as you're ever apt to encounter. The title is ideal, because most readers would focus on the word "affair" but the real operative word is "end" - this is a meditation about the end of something. Greene isn't interested at all in the affair itself, but he is VERY interested in how gnawing anger and regret can make a man so full of hate that he begins to consider a war with God Himself. He writes sentences that work like reverse Chinese puzzle boxes: a great sentence will lead to a great phrase that in turn becomes a marvelous sentence in a transcendent paragraph and so on and so on. It is also worth noting that the narrator is an author, which gives Greene license to write some of the most cogent thoughts on the topic of writing itself that I have ever read. Beautiful and unforgettable, if this is your introduction to Graham Greene (as it was mine) it can only make you hungry for more.

One great benefit of the recent release of Neil Jordan's version of "End" is that it prodded me into re-reading the book, sending me off into a bit of a Graham Greene kick. Jordan's movie version makes some rather key changes (not for the better), while sticking eerily close at other times. The bottom line is the familiar one: the book is much better than the movie, especially in delivering the message Greene intended to convey. Faulkner described "End" once as the best novel in any language he'd ever read. (No doubt providing the impetus for innumerable doctoral theses in the meantime.) While I think "The Power & the Glory" is better, this is still a wonderful work, wrestling with the themes of love, faith, and religion as one.

Graham Greene, arguably one of the most important British writers of the 20th century, does more than write a little expose on the difficulties of being Catholic during WWII - he expresses the turmoil experienced by anyone who has struggled with belief, desire, hope and conviction. There's never a sure victor in such struggles - our choices sometimes waver and are shifted by forces we can't perceive - but are still ultimately our choice. This can be read as a light read, but will pull at you to read more into it. This can be read as a soul-searching exercise - but not tiresome. The prose is simple and elegant, making for both a lovely story and a lovely parable.

Although the broad outline of The End of the Affair by Graham Greene is like that of all adulterous relationships, the story is not a typical love affair and the ending most unexpected: the narrator and lover of Sarah Miles who is known as Bendrix and Henry Miles, the husband of Sarah Miles, become friends and decide to live in the same house after Sarah Miles' death.

The story is fascinating. The novel is set in London during and just after WWII. The story revolves around three central characters: the writer Maurice Bendrix who narrates the story; Sarah Miles; and her husband, the civil servant Henry Miles. Sarah and Bendrix are lovers. Bendrix' flat is hit with a bomb while he was with Sarah and Bendrix is nearly killed. After this, Sarah breaks off the affair with no apparent explanation, a mystery that obsesses Bendrix for most of the novel. He narrates this obsession - and jealousy - and his efforts to unravel the mystery. He hires a detective through whom he is able to get Sarah's diary. Through her diary, he learns that, when she thought he was dead after the bombing, she made a promise to God not to see Bendrix again if God allowed him to live again.

The nature of hate, love, jealousy - and faith - is explored in some depth in the novel through Bendrix' narration of his feelings about Sarah, their relationship, his philosophy, and outlook on life. Through Bendrix, the author Greene examines the nature of hate, love, jealousy - and faith. Sarah dies Bendrix does not believe in God. Sarah dies from pneumonia and after her death there were some unexplained happenings that could only be described as "miraculous", giving meaning to Sarah's faith. By the last page, maybe, just maybe, Bendrix may have come to believe in a God. Still, he finds it hard to love such a God.

It's an interesting and gripping novel - very Greenesque.

Probably the ultimate love triangle, but one, it could be sensed, unevenly matched. How do you even begin to compete against God? Graham Greene has done it again. He merged the physical realm with the spiritual dimension. And the overlap provided the love and hate struggle.
Maurice Bendrix, the novel's narrator, had a lot of questions about the end of his affair. But when the answers came, he soon found out that he was powerless to fight for his love.
Amid God's overwhelming presence, Bendrix refused to leap, as he termed it, as Sarah did. All the signs were there and God, for him, shifted from imagined to real. But he was firm in his hate and would not take that leap to love, precisely because he felt that God denied him the one person he loved.
Yet this is the situation where the absolute sacrifice is called for. When nothing's left, isn't God the one we turn to? But Bendrix was too absorbed in his loss to realize this.
This is now the seventh Graham Greene novel I've read and I am still amazed at how he sets up his novels so beautifully. Definitely, he's shown me time and time again why he's my favorite author. He's proved to me that there's always something deeper than the physical, that we exist not just in body, but in soul as well.

Written by Graham Green, "The End of the Affair" is a story of a relationship between a married woman Sarah Miles and her lover Maurice Bendrix. The book is written in a form of Bendrix's diary, in which he accounts for his past affair with Sarah, as well as for the events that take place in the present, when the woman returns into his life. Tormented by the whole array of emotions towards his former lover, the protagonist claims that "this is a record of hate far more than of love," but from the very beginning grapples with his feelings trying to find the truth behind his own jealousy and Sarah's changed behavior.

The events that take place in the story are presented out of their chronological order -- in the beginning, the reader is given only an occasional glimpse of Bendrix's passionate relationship with Sarah of two years ago; while it is easy to reconstruct the whole story from these occasional bits, one can't help but be somewhat biased by the narrator, who offers a very one-sided account of the events. It is not until the middle of the book that the reader joins Bendrix in discovering a different side of the affair, with the help of Sarah's own diary. From that point on, one becomes an observer of emotional fever of two lovers, whose torments are exacerbated by sudden quest of God and faith by formerly atheistic Sarah. By the end of the book this quest, which I personally have found very interesting, becomes the leading theme of the story and to some extent affects each major character.

It was the first book by G. Green that I have ever read, but it, most certainly, won't be the last one. I absolutely loved the author's simple and unpretentious style, his ability to seemingly withdraw from the story and let the characters take the center stage. As a result, when turning pages of "The End of the Affair", I almost believed that I was reading a melancholic account of a beautiful story of passionate love between a man and a woman, narrated and experienced by a real person. This wonderful novel will definitely join the ranks of my favorite books.