Written by Graham Greene
This is a gorgeously-written classic, published first in 1951, that begins in media res: “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.” Not just an account of the end of an affair, but the beginnings of faith, as well. This is a stunning book that chronicles the obsessions, jealousies, doubts and budding belief in a God during World War II, between three central characters: writer, Maurice Bendrix, Sarah Miles, and her husband, civil servant Henry Miles. Graham Greene’s own affair with Catherine Watson formed the basis for The End of the Affair. The novel was chosen by Robert McCrum for his list of the 100 greatest novels in English.
The End of the Affair is a painfully-moving novel as it follows the lovers’ tortuous feelings, not only about their illicit love, but also about both characters’ growing beliefs in a Catholic God.
The main character Bendrix obsessively wrestles with demons throughout and admits that “This is a record of hate far more than of love.” It is a hate born out of love for Sarah, in his retrospective account of their adulterous affair during World War II, and how faith, too, can be born from that same hate/love conundrum. “If I could write with love, but if I could write with love, I would be another man: I would never have lost love.” Which he does, in the course of the novel: “I became aware that our love was doomed,” Henry says. “Love had turned into a love-affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour.” The narrator grapples with feelings of intense jealousy throughout, jealousy of Sarah’s relationship with her husband. “Jealousy,” he says, “exists only with desire.” And later he says, “Anybody who loves is jealous.” And after she leaves him he says, “How I hated her.”
Love ends in this novel when Sarah makes a pact with God after Bendrix is pinned under a door in an explosion during the Blitz. If he lives, then she will forsake her love for Bendrix. And she is true to her word. Bendrix lives, and Sarah leaves him. She continues to grapple with her choice, and her belief in a God. “This is the end,” she says. “But, dear God, what shall I do with this desire to love?” “Make me believe,” she entreats God. And later she says, “I’ve caught belief like a disease. I’ve fallen into belief like I fell in love.”
Midway through the novel, Sarah dies of an untreated lung infection, and Bendrix must learn to live without her, as his obsessions move from love/hate, to a tenuous belief in a God that he struggles to live with, but cannot live without. This is a book to be read, and read again.