Reading the 20th Century discussion

For January, our Mod-Led read is:

The End of the Affair

London is our theme for January - and our mod read, The End of the Affair by Graham Greene is set in the besieged capital during and after the Blitz. The city is key to this short, passionate novel, as Vienna is to Greene's The Third Man. The story is told in the first person by writer Maurice Bendrix (partly a self-portrait), who is involved in an illicit war-time affair with Sarah, the wife of a neighbour. Their relationship quickly becomes an obsession and takes over his life, with love, hate, jealousy and Catholic guilt all packed into less than 200 pages. A must for romantics, cynics, lovers of Greene and anyone interested in wartime London.

I used to get constantly confused between The end of the affair, An affair to remember and Brief Encounter. I finally saw brief encounter at the BFI and read the short screen play which is great.
I’ve never read The end of the affair or watched it.

The End of the Affair is very different from Brief Encounter, Farrah, though I love that too, and have visited the original station in Carnforth (actually done up to look as it did in the film).

Ooh just spotted this - think my notifications have got clogged up! I have a copy of this and will definitely be joining in January.

Good to hear, Pamela :)

Yes, good news, Pamela. Looking forward to this one.

I love Graham Greene's work and read this many years ago now. It will be good to revisit.

I also read it some years ago, Roisin. I do recall loving it, however, and am looking forward to re-reading.

Our discussion for The End of the Affair by Graham Greene will re-open on 1 Jan 2018.


Here's to another wonderful discussion

In the meantime you can discuss all thing GG over at the Graham Greene favourite author thread...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...



The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

"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 he at last comes to recognise.

I started The End of the Affair yesterday and I'm about a third of the way through.


As always with Graham Greene the writing is exquisite and he is conjuring a wonderful mood of obsession and despair.

I am finding the selfish and creepy narrator a bit hard to deal with though. He is a nasty, petty and vindictive man who, so far, thinks nothing of inflicting pain and suffering on others.

And yet, for all that, it is compelling and I can't wait to get back to it.

This is my favourite of Greene's novels that I have read. I love any books set in wartime London, I must confess, so that probably helps.

Susan, this is my favourite by Greene too and one of my all-time favourite novels - I'm not sure how many times I've read it, but there is always something new to discover.

I've just started re-reading and noticed for the first time that it's the aftermath of Christmas when Bendrix meets Henry in the rain and takes him to the pub, and that there's a mention of stained glass damaged by a wartime bombing.

Nigeyb wrote: "As always with Graham Greene the writing is exquisite and he is conjuring a wonderful mood of obsession and despair..."

I think that's a perfect description of the style of this book, Nigeyb.

On Bendrix, my feeling is that he is an unreliable narrator consumed by self-hatred, so he can't always be trusted on his descriptions of his own motivation - he is certainly bitter and angry, but I don't think of him as selfish and creepy.

Part of the fascination of his character is that he is at least partly a self-portrait of Graham Greene - although Bendrix's novels sound very different, as he claims they are all on the surface and that he is praised as a technician. I can't imagine anyone saying that about Greene!

Thanks Susan - thanks Judy - those are excellent points


I realise Bendrix is, in part at least, a self portrait of Graham Greene. I wish I had a copy of The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War to hand, as I cannot now remember the detail of what Lara Feigel revealed about Greene's affair(s).

In this book, Lara Feigel explores the war time experiences of five writers: Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen, Rose Macaulay, Henry Yorke (aka Henry Green), and Hilde Spiel. During the Blitz, and with the very real chance of not surviving the next 24 hours, the social classes mingled more freely, in the underground and the streets, and, in some cases, with partners and/or children evacuated, there was the opportunity for extra marital affairs.

By the way, I am now into book three (about halfway) and, reading Sarah's diary, Bendrix understands the truth. This section is enthralling - beautifully written and absolutely heartbreaking.

I really struggled with this one - only 2-stars from me. I don't want to spoil the party but is it ok to discuss what I didn't like about it? I'll wait a bit till more people have read it to avoid spoilers.

Oh, and happy new (reading) year to all!

I'm onto Book Four now - Bendrix having read the diaries


I have the strong sense now of Graham Greene bring all the strands together now.

I am absolutely transfixed by this book now and will probably it tonight or tomorrow.

This could be my favorite by Greene as well. It's a heartbreaker.

Nigeyb wrote: "I wish I had a copy of The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War to hand, as I cannot now remember the detail of what Lara Feigel revealed about Greene's affair(s)..."

I've just been looking back at this - it tells how the book was partly inspired by two love affairs of Greene's. The most famous is his affair with American socialite Catherine Walston, believed to be the inspiration for Sarah, who was indeed married to a civil servant (also a Labour candidate), Harry. Their relationship started after the war.

Earlier, during the Blitz, Greene was involved with another woman, Dorothy Glover, so their relationship also had some influence on the book.

This is just from flicking back through some bits of The Love-charm of bombs, which I thought was a wonderful read - I also have the follow-up book by Lara Feigel, The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich , and hope to read that one soon.

Thanks so much Judy - that's exactly what I was hoping some kind person would post!

I'm also planning to go back to Love/bombs, as much for preparation for our Elizabeth Bowen read as for Greene.

Love/bombs was a great read. Re: Bowen, I also enjoyed Love's Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries 1941-1973

Roman Clodia wrote: "I really struggled with this one - only 2-stars from me. I don't want to spoil the party but is it ok to discuss what I didn't like about it? I'll wait a bit till more people have read it to avoid ..."

R.C., I'm sorry you didn't like this book as I love it, but of course it is ok to discuss what you didn't like.

However, re spoilers, please could we wait until January 10 to discuss later plot twists and the ending?

I haven't received my book yet. Possibly tomorrow.

I liked the way Maurice wonders about the significance of Henry’s red eyes in the first chapter - has he been crying, not wearing his glasses in front of strangers (and why does this bother him?) or drinking too much?

I've just finished. As I state above I initially found Bendrix to be selfish and creepy - a nasty, petty and vindictive man, however as the book progresses it is clear why he has to be like that. His arch rationalism and bitterness must remain steadfast to resist the "coincidences" which assail him once Sarah is gone.

It's a magnificent novel. Indeed I've been spellbound since I picked it up on New Years Eve. Every character is perfectly drawn and all play an important role, even minor characters like Parkis and "his boy".

Greene's skill is in making us, the readers, see what Bendrix refuses to acknowledge, that love is starting to seep into his life by the end, despite his overt protestations to the contrary in the book's final two sentences. I'm deliberately keeping it slightly vague for now as we're keeping it spoiler free until 10 Jan.

At the book's outset I thought it was good, if a little too misanthropic, however the conclusion I was absolutely enthralled. What a writer. And to think that his other Blitz novel, the wonderful The Ministry of Fear, is so completely different.

Here's a question for you.....


Do all truly great romantic novels focus on pain and hate?

Nigeyb wrote: "Here's a question for you.....
Do all truly great romantic novels focus on pain and hate?"

Great question! No, in my view: my all time favourite is Austen's Persuasion, where while there's certainly pain and regret, there's no hate between Anne and Wentworth.

On the other hand, there's a strand of romantic love rhetoric that we can trace back to Catullus (1 BCE) that filters through love literature across history: one of Catullus' best-known epigrams is odi et amo :

I hate and I love. Why do I do this, you may ask.
I don't know, but I feel it and it torments me.

One of the ideas that this and Greene's novel encapsulate is that of powerlessless and submission - in Greene, to a divine as well as secular love (or is the latter just a substitute for the former?)

Great answer RC! Thanks.


I have also been musing on some of the different types of love described in The End of the Affair, specifically....

- Bendrix and his intense, jealous, calculating, restless, obsessive love

- Henry's accepting, loyal, trusting, companionable, dutiful love

Clearly each truly loves Sarah in their own way

Also, without getting into specifics, how did the Catholic elements work for you?

The End of the Affair is the fourth and final Greene novel with an overtly Roman Catholic dimension. The others are Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter.

I'm not remotely religious and this aspect of the book is the least successful part of a wonderful novel for me. Greene's musings on Catholicism (and Waugh's for that matter) feel very dated.

It's the description of two people caught in an illicit and doomed love affair which makes it so compelling.

And I loved the non-linear mix of flashbacks, stream-of consciousness thoughts, diary entries, agency reports etc etc to allow the reader to fully appreciate the story.

If Bendrix is really Greene then it must rank as one of the most unflattering self portraits in literature. I found this in a Guardian article on the book which suggests he was holding up a mirror, at least to some extent....

The English edition, published by William Heinemann in September 1951, reads “To C”. But the American edition, much less cryptic, reads “To Catherine with love”. Catherine Walston, the wife of the Labour peer Harry Walston, had been quite explicitly Greene’s mistress for several years, in a relationship that tormented all concerned. Few women ever touched Greene as deeply, however, and his novel became the sad record of their ultimately doomed relationship.

Nigeyb mentioned John Crace's brilliant digested classics on the Woolf thread; I loved his End of the Affair - though don't read it till you've finished the book: https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...

So funny - he pinpoints exactly what didn't work for me!

Absolutely brilliant RC - thanks. I especially enjoyed the Parkis sections.


But absolutely not to be read by anyone who has yet to read, or finish, the novel.

Much more than pain and hate, I thought jealousy was the most destructive force in the novel. I shall look at the digested classics.

Nigeyb wrote: "Also, without getting into specifics, how did the Catholic elements work for you?

The End of the Affair is the fourth and final Greene novel with an overtly Roman Catholic dimension. The others are Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter."

They did not work for me in "Brighton Rock", but they did in this one and the other two (and in Brideshead, Sword of Honour).
There is supposed to be self-examination, but if one cannot understand one's own motivations then it is not going to work very well.

Nigeyb wrote: "Also, without getting into specifics, how did the Catholic elements work for you?"

Very problematically! Will discuss further once more people have read this.

I thought the Catholic elements worked well and tied in with the dark, tense feeling of the novel - but again I will have more to say after the 10th when we get into discussing the ending.

I've been thinking that one reason I love The End of the Affair is the first-person narration, which is a bit like a voiceover to a film - it has quite a noirish flavour to it.

I was just wondering how many novels Greene wrote in the first person, and came across an interesting article from The Spectator which says: "Graham Greene turned to the first person narrative for The End of the Affair after reading Great Expectations and being ‘captivated by the apparent ease with which Dickens used the first person’. "

This article also says that Evelyn Waugh once said writing novels in the first person was contemptible... before he famously went on to do so in Brideshead Revisited.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2007/03/f...

I didn't manage to answer the question of which other novels Greene wrote in the first person - The Quiet American is mentioned here but I believe there are others.

On the self-portrait elements, at the start of Chapter 6, the description of writing his 500 words a day is fascinating - I believe this is exactly how Greene himself usually worked, although he sometimes wrote much faster, for instance when he wrote The Power and the Glory and The Confidential Agent at the same time in 1938 and took drugs to keep himself going. (He is very candid about this in the introduction to The Confidential Agent).

Judy wrote: "...one reason I love The End of the Affair is the first-person narration, which is a bit like a voiceover to a film - it has quite a noirish flavour to it"

I'd not considered that point before Judy but I completely agree - it gives it a very personal quality - and as you say a noirish flavour - including a sense of doom and inevitability.

I really loved this book - and that is not something I was expecting to say based on the first 100 pages or so. The final third of the book, in particular, was especially powerful.

I also liked the first person narration. You see things through Bendrix's eyes, which mean that, at first, you don't question his point of view. However, as the book progresses, you obviously uncover different viewpoints and so the scope widens. I do agree strongly that there was a real sense of inevitability about the novel.

Susan wrote: "I also liked the first person narration. You see things through Bendrix's eyes, which mean that, at first, you don't question his point of view."

Having just read the introduction to Vintage edition of The End of the Affair, written by Monica Ali, I can confirm that Graham Greene was dissatisfied with his decision to write in the first person. The End of the Affair was the first book he'd written in the first person, and he was inspired by Great Expectations. This insight comes from Ways of Escape*.

Monica Ali's introduction is well worth a read (though as with all introductions, best to wait until you've actually read the book). Monica concludes by stating...

We recognise instinctively the fear of a loss of self, whether to God or science; we know that though Bendrix states that his chronicle is one of hate, it is really one of doubt; and we salute the deceptively simple complexity of a writer who never gives us easy answers to the question of what it is to be human.

Ain't that the truth?


*Ways of Escape (1980) by Graham Greene

With superb skill and feeling, Graham greene retraces the experiences and encounters of a long and extraordinary life. His restlessness is legendary; he has travelled like an explorer seeking our people and political situations. 'at the dangerous edge of things' - Haiti during the nightmare rule of Papa Doc, Vietnam in the last days - of the French. , Cuba, Prague, Paraguay, Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion. With ironic delight he recalls his time in the British Secret Service in Africa, and his brief involvement in Hollywood. He writes, as only he can about people and places, about faith, doubt, fear and, not least, the trials and craft of writing.

Nigeyb wrote: "Having just read the introduction to Vintage edition of The End of the Affair, written by Monica Ali, I can confirm that Graham Greene was dissatisfied with his decision to write in the first person. The End of the Affair was the first book he'd written in the first person..."

I was surprised to see this, Nigeyb, because I thought his first published novel, The Man Within, was written in the first person, but looking back I see that it is indeed narrated in the third person, though seen through the main character's eyes.

He had written non-fiction in the first person before The End of the Affair, such as Journey Without Maps - I believe some of this doesn't stick too closely to the truth!

My copy came today.

Jan C wrote: "My copy came today."

Hope you enjoy it, Jan :)

I've just finished the book and it's still percolating - certainly an interesting read and spectacularly good in places. For me though it was the first third I enjoyed the most and I'd kind of run out of patience by the end.

Look forward to more discussion when others have finished too.

Thanks Joanna - I am looking forward to discussing in more detail what you liked and what you felt was less successful


Joanna wrote: "For me though it was the first third I enjoyed the most and I'd kind of run out of patience by the end. "

Curiously, whilst I liked the opening sections, I felt the book got progressively better. I think you just have to go with the final section but, overall, I thought that part was really successful.

Joanna wrote: "I've just finished the book and it's still percolating - certainly an interesting read and spectacularly good in places. For me though it was the first third I enjoyed the most and I'd kind of run ..."

Glad I'm not the only one who struggled with this one! More later...

Hi everyone, first appearance here in the group. I'm Madalena, reading from Portugal.

Graham Greene is one of my all time favorite authors and The Power and The Glory is probably my favorite book.

I took the chance of joining this group read, because I never had the chance of reading The End of the Affair.
I'm almost at the end of book 3 and I'm loving it! I'm always amazed by the way that Greene goes to the bottom of ones personality and describes his most darkest feelings.
He's doing that with Bendrix. He can go by a maniac with no feeling and a blind desire of revenge, but he is just weak and he's trying to find meaning anywhere he can.

The way this character is made wasn't a surprise to me. However, when I started reading Sarah's diaries, it took me by surprise! I was not expecting that and I'm loving the constant juggling between "I don't want to believe in anything" and "calm down, by believing I can take some sense out of this". It really gets the struggle of the human nature and the human heart!

I hope I can finish the book today or tomorrow and I look forward to read the discussion here.
(I apologize in advance for any misuse of the English but it’s not my mother tongue)

Thanks Madalena - I felt much the same way about this book.


Your English is very good - much better than my Portuguese!

From 10 Jan we can more freely discuss the ending and get into plot points - for now we're keeping it more general. Just like you did in your post.

I've just re-read the Greene (and Bowen) parts of The Love-Charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War and was interested that Greene's affair with Catherine Walston (one of the models for Sarah) didn't start till 1947 and that she didn't seem to have any religious doubts - one more reminder that we need to be very cautious about equating fiction with autobiography.

That's very interesting Roman Clodia - thanks.

Roman Clodia wrote: "I've just re-read the Greene (and Bowen) parts of The Love-Charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War and was interested that Greene's affair with Catherine Walston (one..."

I do remember reading that, RC. I suppose there was more fictional scope in a wartime romance...