The End of the Affair (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
by Graham Greene
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Book Summary Information
Author: Graham GreeneIntroduction: Michael Gorra
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-08-31
ISBN: 0142437980
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780142437988
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The End of the Affair (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Book Review: Of love and hate
Summary: 5 Stars
I wish it were possible to read certain books for the first time without knowing how they will turn out. But publishers seem to imagine that once a book becomes a classic (and this is one of Greene's masterpieces) the plot becomes common property. I read this in the Penguin Centennial edition, lovely to the eye and soft to the touch, yet the inside-cover blurb manages to reveal in two short paragraphs all the plot twists that Greene, as a master thriller writer, does not disclose until well into the second half of the book. You can see some reviewers on this site trying gamely not to let the cat out of the bag, but others (including the editorial reviews at the top) don't even try. So, if by some miracle you don't know how the novel turns out, stop reading NOW, buy the book, turn straight to page 1 without looking at the cover material, and enjoy. But fortunately, even if you do know the general outline, it is a finely written work of art which will give great pleasure anyhow.
The title is unusually apt. How daring to start a novel, literally, with the END of an affair! From this point where a novel might normally finish, Greene's character Maurice Bendrix begins not only to recall the course of his affair with Sarah Miles, the wife of a dull neighbor in the civil service, but also to gnaw on that word "end." Fueled by what he calls hate, but which we come to recognize as the obverse of his passion, he obsesses about how it ended, why it ended, and what happens after the end. Convinced that Sarah has left him for another man, he hires a private detective (Parkis, a surprisingly touching character) to follow her. Those who know Greene well may not find it hard to guess what Bendrix ultimately discovers, or that a rather sordid book about adultery would be transformed into a grueling challenge to the existence of God. It may in fact be the most explicitly religious of Greene's so-called Catholic novels, and too much for some readers, especially at the end. But it is a beautifully crafted work which never loses touch with the realities of this world (the Blitz, social conventions, physical sex) in its ultimate convergence on the next.
Summary of The End of the Affair (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Maurice Bendrix's love affair with his friend's wife, Sarah, had begun in London during the Blitz. One day, inexplicably and without warning, Sarah had broken off the relationship. Two years later, driven by obsessive jealousy and grief, Bendrix sends Parkis, a private detective, to follow Sarah.Set in London during and just after World War II, Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is a pathos-laden examination of a three-way collision between love of self, love of another, and love of God. The affair in question involves Maurice Bendrix, a solipsistic novelist, and a dutifully married woman, Sarah Miles. The lovers meet at a party thrown by Sarah's dreary civil-servant husband, and proceed to liberate each other from boredom and routine unhappiness. Reflecting on the ebullient beginnings of their romance, Bendrix recalls: "There was never any question in those days of who wanted whom--we were together in desire." Indeed, the affair goes on unchecked for several years until, during an afternoon tryst, Bendrix goes downstairs to look for intruders in his basement and a bomb falls on the building. Sarah rushes down to find him lying under a fallen door, and immediately makes a deal with God, whom she has never particularly cared for. "I love him and I'll do anything if you'll make him alive.... I'll give him up forever, only let him be alive with a chance.... People can love each other without seeing each other, can't they, they love You all their lives without seeing You."
Bendrix, as evidenced by his ability to tell the story, is not dead, merely unconscious, and so Sarah must keep her promise. She breaks off the relationship without giving a reason, leaving Bendrix mystified and angry. The only explanation he can think of is that she's left him for another man. It isn't until years later, when he hires a private detective to ascertain the truth, that he learns of her impassioned vow. Sarah herself comes to understand her move through a strange rationalization. Writing to God in her journal, she says:
You willed our separation, but he [Bendrix] willed it too. He worked for it with his anger and his jealousy, and he worked for it with his love. For he gave me so much love, and I gave him so much love that soon there wasn't anything left, when we'd finished, but You.It's as though the pull toward faith were inevitable, if incomprehensible--perhaps as punishment for her sin of adultery. In her final years, Sarah's faith only deepens, even as she remains haunted by the bombing and the power of her own attraction to God. Set against the backdrop of a war-ravaged city, The End of the Affair is equally haunting as it lays forth the question of what constitutes love in troubling, unequivocal terms. --Melanie Rehak
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