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I’ll start with the basics from the GR blurb so that I don’t give away much more plot.

"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.

Now, a year after Sarah's death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of his passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to love-hate. At first, he believes he hates Sarah and her husband, Henry. Yet as he delves deeper into his emotional outlook, Bendrix's hatred shifts to the God he feels has broken his life, but whose existence he at last comes to recognize.��



The story is told in kind of (I’ll make up a phrase here) multiple retrospectives. We know at the start of the book that Sarah has died, but she ended the affair two years before for, let’s say religious reasons. So, as he narrates the story to the reader, Bendrix is at times going back to her death, or back to their affair and the start of it, six years ago, or back to when she broke off the affair, two years ago.

The End of the Affair is one of Greene’s four ‘Catholic novels.�� The others are Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter. I’ve read all four and I would say this is his ‘most Catholic novel,�� although Graham didn’t like to be referred to as a Catholic novelist. (Although he met with the Pope who told him, basically, keep doing what you’re doing.)

Catholic or not, this is certainly a novel about God, specifically, belief in God. I had to add a God shelf to my reviews. Bendrix, an atheist, is so much in love with Sarah, and so traumatized by her ending the affair, and then by her death, that he hates God for bringing these tragedies about. But wait! How can you hate a God you don’t believe in?

He can’t admit that he might be wrong, so he deliberately tries to stop hating God. And yet he feels Sarah is somehow still ‘there.�� He feels he can’t get involved with other women because she would know he is being unfaithful to her. But wait! If Sarah is still around, ‘up there somewhere…�� what does that mean about a God?

And then we have some mysterious happenings. Miracles? No, Bendrix says, coincidences. Catholic issues also rise to the surface when Bendrix argues with her husband over the funeral. Priest or no priest? Burial or cremation?

Their affair started in 1939, so the war and the London blitz play an important role in the story. Bendrix is a writer. He’s successful enough that he can just about live on his earnings. There’s enough about writing and how all this trauma impacts his writing that I added this book to my ‘writing�� shelf too.

After Sarah’s death Bendrix loses interest in writing. “�� when Sarah left me, I recognized my work for what it was - as unimportant a drug as cigarettes to get one through the weeks and years. If we are extinguished by death, as I still try to believe, what point is there in leaving some books behind any more than bottles, clothes or cheap jewelry?��

Henry, Sarah’s husband is characterized as a boring civil servant. He has no friends and turns to Bendrix in desperation, naively telling him, in effect, ‘I think my wife is having an affair.�� A private detective is hired, adding complexities to the plot.

Bendrix is so in love that he suffers made-up jealousies and so fears eventually falling out of love, that it partially destroys his love. “We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we known more unhappiness.��

Sarah suffers her own convolutions of logic. She comes to believe that you can still be in love with someone even though you choose not to see or interact with them. Why can’t Bendrix feel the same way? “People go on loving God, don’t they, all their lives without seeing Him?��

There’s a lot of good writing. I liked this summary “St. Augustine asked where time came from. He said it 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.��

And here’s a good metaphor about conversation with a dull priest invited to dinner: “He had very limited small talk, and his answers fell like trees across the road.��



Greene is a great writer �� good writing, excellent storytelling and always serious philosophical issues. I just read and reviewed The Quiet American about the Vietnam War, and I decided that was so well done that I would re-read this book that I read many years ago. Greene or his books frequently appears on various lists of “The One Hundred Best…��

Top photo of London in WW II from reddeerplayers.com
The author from slate.com