The End of the Affair (Twentieth Century Classics)
by Graham Greene
Our Price: $22.52
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.50 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Graham GreeneEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1991-11-05
ISBN: 0140184953
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Book Reviews of The End of the Affair (Twentieth Century Classics)
Book Review: The Affair may have ended but not our fascination with the story
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Summary of The End of the Affair (Twentieth Century Classics)
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
Classics Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Classics Books
Native sonby Richard Wright
Perennial Library; Published: 1987; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.75
Native Son: And How Bigger Was Bornby Richard Wright
Perennial; Published: 1993-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $60.00
Raphael and the Noble Taskby Catherine Salton
Harper; Published: 2000-10-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.49
Price in other shops:
Island (Perennial Classics)by Aldous Huxley
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2002-07-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
A Tree Grows in Brooklynby Betty Smith
Harper; Published: 2001-11-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.84
Price in other shops:
The Great Divorce CDby C. S. Lewis
HarperAudio; Published: 2003-11-25; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $12.65
Price in other shops:
Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens
Macmillan Pub Co; Published: 1979-06; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
This Side of Paradiseby Fitzgerald
Scribner Paper Fiction; Published: 1988-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.95
Price in other shops:
Black Coffee (Poirot)by Agatha Christie
Harper Collins Pb; Published: 2002-12-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $68.32
Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1960s)by Joan Didion
Flamingo; Published: 2001-04-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $22.25
Similar Books and other products
The End of the AffairFIENNES,RALPH; Release date: 2000-05-16; DVD
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops:
Never Let Me Goby Kazuo Ishiguro
Vintage; Published: 2006-03-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.48
Price in other shops:
Translations: A Play (Faber Paperbacks)by Brian Friel
Faber & Faber; Published: 1995-03-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.52
Price in other shops:
Atonement: A Novelby Ian McEwan
Anchor; Published: 2003-02-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.45
Price in other shops:
White Teeth: A Novelby Zadie Smith
Vintage; Published: 2001-06-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.92
Price in other shops:
The Golden Notebook: A Novel (P.S.)by Doris Lessing
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2008-10-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.76
Price in other shops:
The Power and the Glory (Penguin Classics)by Graham Greene
Penguin Classics; Published: 2003-02-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.96
Price in other shops:
The Heart of the Matter: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)by Graham Greene
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-09-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.25
Price in other shops:
Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics)by Graham Greene
Penguin Classics; Published: 2007-07-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.52
Price in other shops:
The Quiet American (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)by Graham Greene
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-08-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.75
Price in other shops: