The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Today's Featured Book: 

The End of the Affair

by Graham Greene

Genre: Fiction 

Published: 1951

Page Count: 196 pages

Summary: 

Maurice Bendrix, a writer in Clapham during the Blitz, develops an acquaintance with Sarah Miles, the bored, beautiful wife of a dull civil servant named Henry. Maurice claims it’s to divine a character for his novel-in-progress. That’s the first deception. What he really wants is Sarah, and what Sarah needs is a man with passion. So begins a series of reckless trysts doomed by Maurice’s increasing romantic demands and Sarah’s tortured sense of guilt. Then, after Maurice miraculously survives a bombing, Sarah ends the affair—quickly, absolutely, and without explanation. It’s only when Maurice crosses paths with Sarah’s husband that he discovers the fallout of their duplicity—and it’s more unexpected than Maurice, Henry, or Sarah herself could have imagined.

 

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Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

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 say ‘one chooses’ with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer who—when he has been seriously noted at all—has been praised for his technical ability, but do I in fact of my own will choose that black wet January night on the Common, in 1946, the sight of Henry Miles slanting across the wide river of rain, or did these images choose me? It is convenient, it is correct according to the rules of my craft to begin just there, but if I had believed then in a God, I could also have believed in a hand, plucking at my elbow, a suggestion, ‘Speak to him: he hasn’t seen you yet.’

Greene, Graham. The End of the Affair (p. 7). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition. 

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky. 

When I began to write I said this was a story of hatred, but I am not convinced. Perhaps my hatred is really as deficient as my love. I looked up just now from writing and caught sight of my own face in a mirror close to my desk, and I thought, does hatred really look like that? For I was reminded of that face we have all of us seen in childhood, looking back at us from the shop-window, the features blurred with our breath, as we stare with such longing at the bright unobtainable objects within.

Greene, Graham. The End of the Affair (pp. 56-57). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition. 

Graham Greene was considered "one of the finest writers of his generation." He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times. The End of the Affair is on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Library Journal's Most Influential Fiction of the 20th Century, The Guardian's 100 Best Novels Written in English, and James Mustich's 1000 Books to Read Before You Die. 

I almost never read about man-woman relationships from a man's point of view. Most of the books about relationships I've read in my lifetime have been written from a woman's point of view. The End of the Affair is about a man-woman relationship, and it is written from the man's point of view.

Maurice Bendrix has a relationship with the wife of a civil servant, Sarah Miles. The relationship comes to an end. Bendrix explores the whys and hows. 

It's a story about a relationship that is full of misunderstandings, the unsaid, and confusion---just like relationships in real life. 

One of the things I liked most about this book is how the author told the story; the reader changes in the way he sees characters based on observations of what the character does and says and from what others say about what the character does and says. Greene accomplished this in a masterful way. 

The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.

Greene, Graham. The End of the Affair (p. 47). Kindle Edition. 

I want men to admire me, but that’s a trick you learn at school—a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there’s something to admire. All my life I’ve tried to live in that illusion—a soothing drug that allows me to forget that I’m a bitch and a fake.

Greene, Graham. The End of the Affair (p. 101). Kindle Edition. 

I went back home and again I tried to settle to my book. Always I find when I begin to write there is one character who obstinately will not come alive. There is nothing psychologically false about him, but he sticks, he has to be pushed around, words have to be found for him, all the technical skill I have acquired through the laborious years has to be employed in making him appear alive to my readers.

And yet one cannot do without him. I can imagine a God feeling in just that way about some of us. The saints, one would suppose, in a sense create themselves. They come alive. They are capable of the surprising act or word. They stand outside the plot, unconditioned by it. But we have to be pushed around. We have the obstinacy of nonexistence. We are inextricably bound to the plot, and wearily God forces us, here and there, according to his intention, characters without poetry, without free will, whose only importance is that somewhere, at some time, we help to furnish the scene in which a living character moves and speaks, providing perhaps the saints with the opportunities for their free will.

Greene, Graham. The End of the Affair (pp. 185-186). Kindle Edition.

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

January 24th-30th - What books do you look to for inspiration at the start of the year or to motivate you to make positive changes in your life? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)

I am always looking for good books about creativity in hopes of living each day with a shot of creative zip. I also love to look for good books on happiness. In Britain, there has been a movement to encourage people to read what they call Mood-Boosting Books. I hope to read more of those this year.

Three of the books of this sort that I began the year with are Anam Cara by John O'Donohue, a poet and philosopher; One Bird One Stone by Sean Murphy, a collection of modern Zen stories; and Blue Horses, a book of poetry by Mary Oliver.