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The End of the Affair (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

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"A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead..." "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 further into his emotional outlook, Bendrix's hatred shifts to the God he feels has broken his life, but whose existence at last comes to recognize. Originally published in 1951, The End of the Affair was acclaimed by William Faulkner as "for me one of the best, most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody's language." This Penguin Deluxe Edition features an introduction by Michael Gorra. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. Read more Read less

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (August 31, 2004)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Paperback ‏ : ‎ 192 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0142437980


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 88


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.7 ounces


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.6 x 0.5 x 8.4 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #84,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #817 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction #2,674 in Classic Literature & Fiction #6,326 in Literary Fiction (Books)


#817 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction:


#2,674 in Classic Literature & Fiction:


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Where Has Graham Greene Been My Whole Life?
From the first time I discovered that Graham Greene was a Catholic author, I wanted to check out his work. This was years and years ago, but it wasn't until The End of the Affair was marked down on Audible.com that I finally took the plunge. What a waste of years! The End of the Affair is one of the best books I've ever read. The story of Bendrix's affair with Sarah and its aftermath are so perfect, so true. Bendrix is never quite certain if his story is about love or hate, despair or hope. It is always one extreme or the other. When he believes his competition for Sarah's love is her husband or another man, he hates Sarah in his despair and wants to destroy her. He cannot bare not knowing what took her away. It stifles his art and eats him alive. When he ultimately learns the truth about the ending of their relationship, he is elated and at once certain that he can overcome it all. Michael Kitchen narrated the audio version of this novel and he was no less than superb. This may sound odd (I think it's odd, but I'll share anyway), but the way Kitchen used his breath, particularly in exhaling, made it seem like Bendrix was in my car with me. We were having an intimate conversation. I could almost smell his tobacco. The effect was fantastic and could not have happened had Kitchen not been paired with such a gifted author. It was a wonderful way to first experience Graham Greene. If you've read The End of the Affair before and are hankering for a reread, I cannot recommend this audio version enough. Even though I loved the audio, I found that I had to possess the book as well. A Kindle version just wouldn't do. I immediately turned around and bought the Penguin Classics Deluxe edition of both The End of the Affair and, on Rebecca from The Book Lady's Blog's suggestion, The Quiet American. As soon as they arrived, I hugged them to my chest. It felt so good and was nearly impossible for me to not start rereading The End of the Affair. When I began reading The End of the Affair, I didn't know what to expect. What really surprised me was the ending would have a similar affect on me as Gone With the Wind. It was so open ended and I loved every possibility. I cannot rave about it enough. The End of the Affair has got to be the best book I've read since I started blogging. More Graham Greene, please. Wow! ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2011 by Literate Housewife
    • Thin Line between Love and Hate
The End of the Affair is the most autobiographical of Greene's major novels. In it, he exhumes the emotions of a fiery sexual passion, apparently based on his own affair with Catherine Walston, to whom he dedicates the novel. Greene converted to Catholicism as a young man, and he also uses this novel to illuminate the difficult path a seeker must take to arrive at belief in the Roman Catholic god. The plot is convoluted, and at times barely credible. The novelist Maurice Bendrix had a torrid affair with Sarah Miles, the wife of a dull civil servant, which Sarah broke off abruptly and without explanation. The novel opens a few years later, when Bendrix bumps into Sarah's husband, Henry. Henry, unaware of his wife's affair with Bendrix, confides that he's worried about Sarah's mysterious comings and goings, and is thinking of hiring a detective to follow her. Henry abandons the idea, but Bendrix is still consumed with jealousy and wants to know who has replaced him in Sarah's affections. He hires the detective on his own. Over the course of the investigation, Bendrix learns why Sarah left him, who Sarah is now seeing, and that he hasn't been displaced by another man after all. Bendrix must decide how to deal with what he's learned about Sarah, and what to do about his reawakened feelings for her. Greene spares us no instance of the anger, pettiness, and spitefulness of Bendrix' possessive love. Indeed, we see little that's life-enhancing in this affair, unless you count the fever of desire that hurls Bendrix out of the confines of his own consciousness or the brief spikes of bliss during snatched moments of sex. Bendrix discovers, as many have before him, that love and hate come from the same source; once he's fallen into the well of strong emotions, he has trouble figuring out how to swim back up to the light. Both Sarah and Bendrix are reaching for something transcendent. Bendrix believes he'll find it in the relationship with Sarah, if only they can love each other perfectly enough. Sarah comes to believe that what she's seeking lies beyond the flesh. The emotions unleashed by her physical love for Maurice enable her to apprehend the "aweful mystery" of divine love. She resists at first, then gives over to god. Bendrix is a harder case. He starts out dismissing even the idea of god as a childish legend. By the end of the book, he's having heated arguments with this god in whom he doesn't believe. Greene's justification for Sarah's turn towards religious faith seems to be that human love, compassion and agency are inadequate to the task of relieving human suffering. Once we reach the end of human resources, god is the only answer left. He's too good a novelist to get overly didactic, and too keen an intellect not to have doubts about the rigid, dour dogma of his adopted Catholicism. This interplay between doubt and faith gives The End of the Affair its tensile strength. That and his emotionally courageous depiction of passionate love allow this novel to transcend its post World War II milieu, and explain why it continues to snare successive generations of readers. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2005 by Bestgb
    • My least favorite of all his books.
The story reads like a blow by blow account of an actual, unfulfilling, extramarital affair. I found it self-absorbed, self-involved, and self-indulgent, which may or may not be the actual case. Who knows. And even more to the point, who cares? That's my primary criticism of this book. I didn't care a bit for any of the primary characters. They weren't interesting, weren't engaging. They whined for 275 pages. The second half of the book is an examination of religion and love of God. Once again, it wasn't interesting because I don't wrestle with these issues in my own life. If I struggled with religion I might have been more open to his struggle. But I don't, so I'm not. I don't think he could have gotten this thing published if it was his first or second novel. All that said, I am a huge fan. I love his direct, clean writing. I guess everybody has a low point in their chosen field. This is Greene's. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2016 by L. Richards

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