The End of the Affair

[Kelly_Hunsaker_reads]

3 stars

Jealousy. This book is not about love or hate; it is all about jealousy. The jealousy of man and the jealousy of God.

I listened to the audio version, read by Colin Firth and that was exquisite. He earns a solid five stars! I wish I could give the book the same rating. I loved the first two thirds of the book but the ending third went off course for me. For me there was so much emotion mined from the relationship between the three lead characters. It was a wonderful examination of what it means to involve ourselves with another person, and what it is to love. Sarah is in a quietly loveless marriage and enters into an affair with a neighbor named Maurice. Unfortunately Maurice is incapable of loving in the moment. He is obsessively jealous... of her past lovers and of the men who he believes will be her lovers next. He doesn't allow himself to love the real and present Sarah. Eventually his jealousy pushes her away...

Sarah's husband, Henry, also loves her. The problem for them is that his love is dull and passionless. He fails to recognize and give to her what she needs.

I expected Sarah to leave them both and to find another man. I suppose the fact that the author twisted the tables here is a positive thing. Surprise is always good. But at this point Sarah finds God, and she doesn't find joy in God either -- and neither did I.

The book simply meandered off course here...

[Kristel]

The story is told on many levels. On surface it is a story of an affair and the love triangle. We have Bendrix the narrator, author, Sarah the wife/lover and Henry the husband. It is also about search for meaning and God as well as a story of being a writer. This story according to the narrator is the story of hate. The narrator is unable to trust and is full of insecurities and I question whether he ever knew love. He knew desire, jealousy and insecurity leading to meanness but he never loved. He never was able to care about anything but himself. Then there is the element of theological debate of the existence of God. I did not know that Graham Greene is considered the Catholic writer but found out when doing research about this novel after reading it. Sarah faces an existential crisis. One of the characters quote, Augustine's dictum that time "came out of the future which didn't exist yet, into the present that had no duration, and went into the past which had ceased to exist." which I really like. There is redemption and existential meaning in the book. The author struggled with his own affair and this book may very well reflect his own experiences and thoughts.

Rating: 4.28

I think the book achieved quite a bit even though I didn't especially enjoy it because Bendrix was not a likable character and I disliked his decisions. But when I read reviews of this book, it is obvious a great achievement. I liked that it was about an affair but did not need to use a lot of sex or poor language to tell the story of an affair. Also want to mention that I listened to the audio read by Colin Firth and that he won an audio for his performance.

[Gail]

The End of the Affair is one of Graham Greene's so called "Catholic" novels.
The story is a classic triangular love affair with the narrator, who is also an author, telling us that this is a story about hate rather than love. The story is certainly about jealousy and about the bitterness and anger that is generated when you can not possess completely the person that you love. However, no one can ever possesses another completely and although he hates Sarah for leaving him, he hates himself more for not being able to truly come to terms with why she left. The third person in the triangle is a quiet civil service of a man without passion and without the ability to give Sarah what she needs but who nevertheless loved her. The third 'entity' is also God, as Sarah makes a promise to God when she did not believe in God and then, in her pain turns to God not to free herself from pain but to understand and accept the pain even though she does not want it. The story is masterfully written so that the three main characters seem very true to life with true to life emotions. The story breaks down when we are faced not just with the discussions and concerns about faith and belief in a divine creator but very specifically in a Catholic god. I did not understand why that particular leaning was so important to Sarah, although I do understand why it was important to Graham Greene.
A worthy novel even if not my favorite of Greene's.

[Diane]

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
3.5 stars

Best first sentence in a book. "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 enjoyed the first third of the book; getting to know Sarah, Henry and Bendrix. The second third my interest started to wane as I was reading Sarah's diary. The final third had some interest for me regarding Sarah but the rest regarding religion and jealousy just did not do it for me.

I didn't realize this book would be so dark. "How's Sarah? I asked because it might have seemed odd if I hadn't, though nothing would have delighted me more than to have heard that she was sick, unhappy, dying. I imagined in those days that any suffering she underwent would lighten mine, and if she were dead I could be free: I would no longer imagine all the things one does imagine under my ignoble circumstances. I could even like poor silly Henry, I thought, if Sarah were dead."

"...but that wasn't what Sarah had said, and sitting there beside Henry in the Victoria Gardens, watching the day die, I remembered the end of the whole 'affair' ".