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


From AudioFile
In this novel of adultery and religious quest--scandalous in its day--Maurice Bendrix is a sardonic and cynical writer who reflects on his affair with Sarah, a married woman, during the bombing of London in 1940. British actor Michael Kitchen is well suited to Bendrix's character, and his narration nicely handles the sarcastic humor. He's usually convincing with the other char-acters, as well, though the lengthy section of excerpts from Sarah's diary would have been more effective with some subtle vocal change. It might have helped define her character more sharply if she didn't sound exactly like Bendrix. D.B. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Review
"One of the most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody's language." --William Faulkner


"[His] best novel...its focus on the irrational is very relevant to contemporary life." --Neil Jordan, Independent on Sunday


From the Trade Paperback edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"This is a record of hate far more than of love," writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair. And it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles -- a hate bred of a passion that ultimately lost out to God. Now, a year after Sarah's death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of that passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to lovehate. At the start he believes he hates Sarah and her husband, Henry. By the end of the book, Bendrix's hatred has shifted to the God he feels has broken his life but whose existence he has at last come to recognize. Originally published in 1951, The End of the Affair was acclaimed by William Faulkner as "for me one of the best, most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody's language." This Graham Greene Centennial Edition includes a new introductory essay by Michael Gorra.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

To honor Greene's centennial, Penguin is reissuing these six titles in deluxe editions featuring new cover art, French flaps, and ragged paper at an affordable price. Very nice if you need some new copies. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

AudioFile - Dan Bortolotti