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This book is extremely special to me. It amazed me. It flipped me around and turned me upside down. I was overtaken, absorbed, and transfixed in a whirlwind of emotion.

The End of the Affair was exactly what I needed to help me through some recent difficulties in my personal life. (No, I didn't have an affair with a married woman, heh. But a relationship did recently end for me, and that kind of thing is painful, and tough to deal with, as you probably know.) This novel helped me through all that: By channeling the thoughts, emotions, and lessons from the book, I was able to understand myself and my situation better. I read it at just the right time and the impact was healthy, significant, and powerful.

It seems that most good books show, in some way, how ridiculous we all are. And what is more ridiculous than love? The End of the Affair shows the nuances, complexities, depths and strengths of love; how serious, dynamic, and mighty it is, while also showing how selfish it is. And you can't really have love without hate, can you? Love and hate of another; love and hate of self; love and hate of God -- or of his nonexistence -- are the major themes. The love depicted in the novel is not a halfway love (is there such a thing as a halfway love?). It is in extremes: it either loves or hates. Love in all it's splendor and horror, Greene gets it.

The novel is also about life, and death, and fate, and God, and all the struggles associated with these things. The existential struggle of the individual; the selfish power of our personalized emotions in our ultimate search for love in its many forms.

"But if I start believing that, then I have to believe in your God. I'd have to love your God. I'd rather love the men you slept with."

The highs that are the state of being emphatically in love are conveyed beautifully in this novel.

"...the moment of absolute trust and absolute pleasure, the moment when it was impossible to quarrel because it was impossible to think."

The way your very insides change -- not just when you're with that person, but how everything in life has a more ecstatic, elated feel to it, because the person you love is always in the back of your mind. And, because of that, and because love makes you happy -- releasing all kinds of awesome chemicals -- you associate your beloved with almost everything, and almost everything seems and feels better. Life is so much better when you're in love, and as you turn the pages of this novel, you feel it.

The way you put your best self forward every time; the positive inner desire and motivating factor of trying to prove that you're completely worthy, and the very best for that person. The electricity that starts upon contact; how it never really goes away, but constantly gets reaffirmed through smiles, and small gestures, and actually grows stronger the longer you're together.

"It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love."

The fucked up selfishness of it all. The fact that while our emotions and inner selves are on high alert and more intense, so is our awareness of our shortcomings and weaknesses. We become extremely self-centered. ME. The insecurity, the jealousy; the panicky anxiety -- how all those subconscious, hidden pathologies start to surface -- you push them back, but you're made aware that they are there.

The lack of control.

"Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust."

Yet even with your insecurities and imperfections, because you're seen as perfect in your lovers eyes, you start to see yourself as perfect. Deep down you know it's a farce (which is probably why jealousy and pettiness often begin to play roles), but it feels great, and it makes you love your partner all the more... but still, in the back of your mind.....

"If I'm a bitch and a fake, is there nobody who will love a bitch and a fake?"

The desperate longing, the fear of finding that it isn't real; that the other doesn't feel the same way.

"I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing."

The fear of it ending.

"Sometimes I get tired of trying to convince him that I love him and shall love him forever. He pounces on my words like a barrister and twists them. I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can’t realize that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud, I say to myself silently and write it here."

The way you love that person with your full throbbing heart; then hate that person with every angry, hateful fiber in your very being. But oh the joy. Oh, the complexity.. Oh, the might. Love and Hate.

Then it ends. Your world is shaken to the core. You see something that reminds you of the person and the times you had, and feel like someone punched you in the stomach. And you see that person in everything, so the pain is always there. The sharp, unbearable pain, like your whole life has been torn upside down; the sick feeling; the empty feeling. You used to love yourself. You now hate everything. Life was splendid, amazing, magical. Life is now dark grey. Painful. The grasping for what was, for understanding what happened. What did I do wrong? The brooding. The self obsession. Did she ever really love me in the first place? What could I have done differently? If only I hadn't said this, or given that impression. Why didn't I see it coming? Paradigm shift all you can, it doesn't go away; the love wants to exist.

But it can't.

The gloomy nothing; the hugging of air; the unfulfilled images and dreams. Just because life has become painful for you, you want it to be painful for everyone else; or you at least you want them to have sympathy for you. How dare they be so happy. Look at me. Pay attention to my pain. How dare others smile and enjoy life. Do you know my pain? ME. My heart, my pain �- nothing else matters �- listen to me, ME, ME. Love, whether in its existence or broken, is like that: it consumes and is selfish.

"I hate you, God. I hate you as though you actually exist."

All in all, broken hearts heal with time, especially if a new love is found. But I think there is a part of the heart that breaks and never comes back; that never fully heals and thus makes us at least a little transformed from who we were before our heart was broken. And slowly through time you realize that not only did you lose a part of yourself, but a part of you gets generated that wasn't there before. The whole thing doesn't make sense -- love never does. But you realize that you are a different and stronger person for having gone through it. It doesn't mean it was worth it. But having found new parts of yourself -- or having generated new parts of yourself -- you've gained something inside that can't ever be taken away; something that will be with you, and only you, for the rest of your life.

This novel amazed me. Graham Greene pulls all this off brilliantly, with emotions toyed and pulled at; with life affirming sentences and quotes on just about every page. He gave me some of the most beautiful and articulate writing I've ever witnessed. It’s hard to imagine how another book could affect my emotions, could hit me in the heart, the way this did. To feel that I'm not the only one; to have it conveyed to me so perfectly -- through me -- was amazing.

When I finished this I had a tingle running up and down my spine. Light fireworks were in my stomach. My head was a happy buzz. My shoulders were so light they had no weight. My mostly numb, yet slightly tickly legs, tripped me up as I hopped from my reading chair to get to my bed, where I just laid there, thinking for an hour, while feeling amazing and transcendent.