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The End of the Affair (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Graham Greene
Publisher: Penguin Classics
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Our Price: $11.20
You Save: $ 2.80 ( 20% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Graham Greene
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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The End of the Affair (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780142437988
ISBN: 0142437980
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 192
Publication Date: 2004-08-31
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product Release Date: 2004-09-28
Studio: Penguin Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780142437988
ISBN: 0142437980
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 192
Publication Date: 2004-08-31
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product Release Date: 2004-09-28
Studio: Penguin Classics
Editorial Review of The End of the Affair (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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
Customer Reviews of The End of the Affair (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Greene's Greatest?
Review: To start with, I am a Greene fanatic, so you might take my opinion with a grain of salt. I didn't read The End of the Affair for many years after I'd read virtually all of Greene's other novels. I love his thrillers, his adventures, his "serious" works. But I didn't think I'd love a book about an adulterous affair, particularly one with God and Catholicism at its center. I finally got around to it. How wrong, wrong, wrong I was.
Having read it twice, I now have to ask whether it's Greene's best book. Every aspect of the book is unexpected: the reason their affair ends, why she leaves, who the man she's seeing is, Bendrix's response, all the way to the end where Bendrix befriends her husband.
What in other hands would have been a simple morality play, is so much more thrilling. An absolute masterpiece, unlike anything else written by GG (or anyone else).
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: 20% Plot, 80% Angst
Review: I hadn't seen the movie when I read this book, so I had no real expectations for it, other than the fact that it is a so-called "classic".
It was a quick read, possibly because I found myself skimming over the repetitive bits, and there were pages of them. The final two pages of Sarah's journal are repeated twice word-for-word a few pages later. I'm surprised to see such a successful short story writer being so uneconomical with words. After Sarah died, there were still 100 pages of the book left. I thought, what else can there possibly be? Answer: 100 more pages of angst.
I was trying to figure out why I didn't find Sarah very interesting and finally I realized what it was: She has no job. She does nothing with her life, except sit around angsting, taking the odd walk and going to the cinema, and cheating on her husband to relieve the boredom. Her meals are cooked for her, the house is cleaned for her by the maid and she has no children to look after. Heaven forbid she do some volunteer work and help other people instead of sitting around sulking. I can't imagine a duller existence. Isn't good fiction supposed to edit out the dull parts of life? Not in this book. The boredom of Sarah's days is lovingly described at length. It wasn't long before I was feeling bored too.
Now we get to the book's worst offense. At one point, I suddenly understood the subtext of this book. Here it is:
[Psst! Hey reader, it's ME, the author! Y'know when the characters are talking to God? They're really talking to ME! You know when Sarah was on her knees, *naked* praying? She was really praying to ME to save Maurice, because, I have the power to bring people back to life! Y'know who resurrected Maurice and did all those miracles? Yup. ME! Sarah thought she loved Maurice, but she really loved ME! She loved me so much she gave up everything for ME!]
I realize every author has a god complex to some extent, but I've never seen it slapped on the page in such a blatant and graceless fashion.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: More humanistic than some would seem to believe.
Review: I have to disagree with the previous poster who says this is more spiritual than anything else. Though it is couched in religious terms, I see this as a cautionary tale about the danger of falling into despair, which is relevant to all humans in addition to being the unforgivable sin. I am an avowed agnostic, and this remains my favorite book after several years. I have never read a better book about the experience of loneliness, jealousy, hatred, despair and selfish love.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Wise. Human. Divine.
Review: This melding of lust, love, and theology joins the short list of the best novels I have 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 story and ruin it for you. There are plenty of twists and surprises. Plenty of memorable quotes and bittersweet moments.
This is a tale set in the WWII London suburbs and narrates a tangled adulterous situation involving: a bachelor author, an important government bureaucrat and his wife, an atheist streetpreacher, a priest, a private eye, and GOD (in an active role). Sounds like a great formula for boredom. IT IS NOT.
I found the first few pages to be a little complex and a bit difficult to get a grip on . . . Graham Greene seemed to be self-indulging in full blown British prose with maximum decorum and complexity. Things quickly settled down into a hard-to-put-down, easy-to-read story. This is a superbly thoughtful and intelligent short novel in which Greene wrings the essence out of the most basic human emotions of love, hate, lust, jealousy, pity, sense of duty, and 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 which 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: An apology for War
Review: I find Mr. Graham Greene to have illuminated the topic of love by having God step into the stage of the drama, in a role as invisible and real as are the tortures of jealousy and desire. Marks of wisdom and theological intimacy abound in this fiction as it allows a battle of wits to take place between the author Maurice Bendrix and the mysterum tremendum of divine intervention, providence and faith. Ultimately there are many a question that shroud this work and sanctimoniously dedicate an altar to the sacred discrimination between the salacious byways of desire with the eternal legacy of Love.
Illnesses, wounds, original sin, anarchical atheism and the anointing of the sick become the passion of a Calvary of sorts which ends by making of Love the miracle we fail to recognize.
The trinity of promises made by Sarah foreshadow the depth of our foibles, the sin of our nature and the destitution with which we accrue faults only to restore a balance which has us complicitous in spite of our volition. The wisdom of the heart is thwarted but in a frugal draft recorded for the absence of the soul to peruse, as if the spoils of war, a pillaged journal, were the source of a fragmentary covenant that follows suit in accordance with a plan which the human mind is only too slow to strike a bargain with. Here prayer becomes a negotiation for the vacuum of faith, and the outcome a solipsism that derogates impurity as a means of transgression that sinfully breaks bread with the devil while human nature is belligerent and inscrutably averse to the sanctions of fate.
As Eros mourns, God is disparaged by the circumstances that derogate and obviate the motions of desire because, as the author of the novel makes gospel truth of it, Love is not a testament of desire but rather a timeless metaphor for the unconditional love God has for us. To hear someone speak on behalf of God is a curious prospect to experience and a peculiar way of dictating the ultimate truth when we see God as jealous as Maurice, as careless as Henry and as weak-willed as Sarah. Why could He not save Sarah from eternal perdition when she has finally found faith and desires Baptism, forgiveness and a proper Catholic burial? Why could God not speak in favor of Henry who is as nonchalant in his role as husband as God is in his invitations? Why does God exert His healing force only to prove His ability to be capricious in His purpose to aeard faith? And then there is Father Crampton, a character full of virtue, patience, and understanding that one wishes to be more like him as both a lover and man of faith. And I think the final message to take from this delightful read is that we must Love the way God loves us. But the God herein found is more akin to that of the Old Testament than the God who sacrificed His son for our sake. Why he needed to make poor Jesus suffer is reason enough to question our understanding of His ways. Perhaps it is because he envied us suffering. Perhaps it was to illustrate the madness in us all, the consummate servility we have towards fear and its embarrassing equivocations. Perhaps it is because it makes it all so impossible to believe and therefore more profound and the faith more difficult. Whatever may be the case this book ought to be included as the 47th book of the Old Testament and the author seems to echo Maurice as he defines his conclusive indecisive warbling where he jots a prayer asking God to leave him alone forever.
Ingersoll once asked the question "why did God make illness contagious instead of health?" When CS Lewis read the question he made the easy remark that God likes the ill more than the sane. And apparently Graham Greene agrees. Perhaps this was an apology for WWII and one that fails miserably. Perhaps we should feel blessed that there is suffering. And through suffering we do learn to love the right way, we do see what love truly is, and the resources we have at our disposal to become better acquainted with happiness. In fact Maurice kept spouting his inability to write about happiness. And even when shown the face of the scared he yet wishes to hate this God because the need for sacrifice is deplorable to him. Apparently God has the last laugh, and we weep amidst such snickering smirking guffaws it gives me the chill. With that said I don't think Maurice's love is anything more than desire.
An excellent story narrated in a bad theological frame of mind. If the devil weeps are we to act compassionate towards him? From this book I take a desire to love as the God of beauty and courage loves: unconditionally, with patience and absolute hope in the goodness of the heart. I'm not sure Graham Greene and I share the same God.
Yet we wrestle with the same questions, and that is the most obvious act of Love to God, even if it hurts like Hell.
Review Summary: Greene's Greatest?
Review: To start with, I am a Greene fanatic, so you might take my opinion with a grain of salt. I didn't read The End of the Affair for many years after I'd read virtually all of Greene's other novels. I love his thrillers, his adventures, his "serious" works. But I didn't think I'd love a book about an adulterous affair, particularly one with God and Catholicism at its center. I finally got around to it. How wrong, wrong, wrong I was.
Having read it twice, I now have to ask whether it's Greene's best book. Every aspect of the book is unexpected: the reason their affair ends, why she leaves, who the man she's seeing is, Bendrix's response, all the way to the end where Bendrix befriends her husband.
What in other hands would have been a simple morality play, is so much more thrilling. An absolute masterpiece, unlike anything else written by GG (or anyone else).
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: 20% Plot, 80% Angst
Review: I hadn't seen the movie when I read this book, so I had no real expectations for it, other than the fact that it is a so-called "classic".
It was a quick read, possibly because I found myself skimming over the repetitive bits, and there were pages of them. The final two pages of Sarah's journal are repeated twice word-for-word a few pages later. I'm surprised to see such a successful short story writer being so uneconomical with words. After Sarah died, there were still 100 pages of the book left. I thought, what else can there possibly be? Answer: 100 more pages of angst.
I was trying to figure out why I didn't find Sarah very interesting and finally I realized what it was: She has no job. She does nothing with her life, except sit around angsting, taking the odd walk and going to the cinema, and cheating on her husband to relieve the boredom. Her meals are cooked for her, the house is cleaned for her by the maid and she has no children to look after. Heaven forbid she do some volunteer work and help other people instead of sitting around sulking. I can't imagine a duller existence. Isn't good fiction supposed to edit out the dull parts of life? Not in this book. The boredom of Sarah's days is lovingly described at length. It wasn't long before I was feeling bored too.
Now we get to the book's worst offense. At one point, I suddenly understood the subtext of this book. Here it is:
[Psst! Hey reader, it's ME, the author! Y'know when the characters are talking to God? They're really talking to ME! You know when Sarah was on her knees, *naked* praying? She was really praying to ME to save Maurice, because, I have the power to bring people back to life! Y'know who resurrected Maurice and did all those miracles? Yup. ME! Sarah thought she loved Maurice, but she really loved ME! She loved me so much she gave up everything for ME!]
I realize every author has a god complex to some extent, but I've never seen it slapped on the page in such a blatant and graceless fashion.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: More humanistic than some would seem to believe.
Review: I have to disagree with the previous poster who says this is more spiritual than anything else. Though it is couched in religious terms, I see this as a cautionary tale about the danger of falling into despair, which is relevant to all humans in addition to being the unforgivable sin. I am an avowed agnostic, and this remains my favorite book after several years. I have never read a better book about the experience of loneliness, jealousy, hatred, despair and selfish love.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Wise. Human. Divine.
Review: This melding of lust, love, and theology joins the short list of the best novels I have 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 story and ruin it for you. There are plenty of twists and surprises. Plenty of memorable quotes and bittersweet moments.
This is a tale set in the WWII London suburbs and narrates a tangled adulterous situation involving: a bachelor author, an important government bureaucrat and his wife, an atheist streetpreacher, a priest, a private eye, and GOD (in an active role). Sounds like a great formula for boredom. IT IS NOT.
I found the first few pages to be a little complex and a bit difficult to get a grip on . . . Graham Greene seemed to be self-indulging in full blown British prose with maximum decorum and complexity. Things quickly settled down into a hard-to-put-down, easy-to-read story. This is a superbly thoughtful and intelligent short novel in which Greene wrings the essence out of the most basic human emotions of love, hate, lust, jealousy, pity, sense of duty, and 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 which 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: An apology for War
Review: I find Mr. Graham Greene to have illuminated the topic of love by having God step into the stage of the drama, in a role as invisible and real as are the tortures of jealousy and desire. Marks of wisdom and theological intimacy abound in this fiction as it allows a battle of wits to take place between the author Maurice Bendrix and the mysterum tremendum of divine intervention, providence and faith. Ultimately there are many a question that shroud this work and sanctimoniously dedicate an altar to the sacred discrimination between the salacious byways of desire with the eternal legacy of Love.
Illnesses, wounds, original sin, anarchical atheism and the anointing of the sick become the passion of a Calvary of sorts which ends by making of Love the miracle we fail to recognize.
The trinity of promises made by Sarah foreshadow the depth of our foibles, the sin of our nature and the destitution with which we accrue faults only to restore a balance which has us complicitous in spite of our volition. The wisdom of the heart is thwarted but in a frugal draft recorded for the absence of the soul to peruse, as if the spoils of war, a pillaged journal, were the source of a fragmentary covenant that follows suit in accordance with a plan which the human mind is only too slow to strike a bargain with. Here prayer becomes a negotiation for the vacuum of faith, and the outcome a solipsism that derogates impurity as a means of transgression that sinfully breaks bread with the devil while human nature is belligerent and inscrutably averse to the sanctions of fate.
As Eros mourns, God is disparaged by the circumstances that derogate and obviate the motions of desire because, as the author of the novel makes gospel truth of it, Love is not a testament of desire but rather a timeless metaphor for the unconditional love God has for us. To hear someone speak on behalf of God is a curious prospect to experience and a peculiar way of dictating the ultimate truth when we see God as jealous as Maurice, as careless as Henry and as weak-willed as Sarah. Why could He not save Sarah from eternal perdition when she has finally found faith and desires Baptism, forgiveness and a proper Catholic burial? Why could God not speak in favor of Henry who is as nonchalant in his role as husband as God is in his invitations? Why does God exert His healing force only to prove His ability to be capricious in His purpose to aeard faith? And then there is Father Crampton, a character full of virtue, patience, and understanding that one wishes to be more like him as both a lover and man of faith. And I think the final message to take from this delightful read is that we must Love the way God loves us. But the God herein found is more akin to that of the Old Testament than the God who sacrificed His son for our sake. Why he needed to make poor Jesus suffer is reason enough to question our understanding of His ways. Perhaps it is because he envied us suffering. Perhaps it was to illustrate the madness in us all, the consummate servility we have towards fear and its embarrassing equivocations. Perhaps it is because it makes it all so impossible to believe and therefore more profound and the faith more difficult. Whatever may be the case this book ought to be included as the 47th book of the Old Testament and the author seems to echo Maurice as he defines his conclusive indecisive warbling where he jots a prayer asking God to leave him alone forever.
Ingersoll once asked the question "why did God make illness contagious instead of health?" When CS Lewis read the question he made the easy remark that God likes the ill more than the sane. And apparently Graham Greene agrees. Perhaps this was an apology for WWII and one that fails miserably. Perhaps we should feel blessed that there is suffering. And through suffering we do learn to love the right way, we do see what love truly is, and the resources we have at our disposal to become better acquainted with happiness. In fact Maurice kept spouting his inability to write about happiness. And even when shown the face of the scared he yet wishes to hate this God because the need for sacrifice is deplorable to him. Apparently God has the last laugh, and we weep amidst such snickering smirking guffaws it gives me the chill. With that said I don't think Maurice's love is anything more than desire.
An excellent story narrated in a bad theological frame of mind. If the devil weeps are we to act compassionate towards him? From this book I take a desire to love as the God of beauty and courage loves: unconditionally, with patience and absolute hope in the goodness of the heart. I'm not sure Graham Greene and I share the same God.
Yet we wrestle with the same questions, and that is the most obvious act of Love to God, even if it hurts like Hell.