Rating: 
Summary: one of the best from the best
Review: Probably the ultimate love triangle, but one, it could be sensed, unevenly matched. How do you even begin to compete against God? Graham Greene has done it again. He merged the physical realm with the spiritual dimension. And the overlap provided the love and hate struggle.
Maurice Bendrix, the novel's narrator, had a lot of questions about the end of his affair. But when the answers came, he soon found out that he was powerless to fight for his love.
Amid God's overwhelming presence, Bendrix refused to leap, as he termed it, as Sarah did. All the signs were there and God, for him, shifted from imagined to real. But he was firm in his hate and would not take that leap to love, precisely because he felt that God denied him the one person he loved.
Yet this is the situation where the absolute sacrifice is called for. When nothing's left, isn't God the one we turn to? But Bendrix was too absorbed in his loss to realize this.
This is now the seventh Graham Greene novel I've read and I am still amazed at how he sets up his novels so beautifully. Definitely, he's shown me time and time again why he's my favorite author. He's proved to me that there's always something deeper than the physical, that we exist not just in body, but in soul as well.
Rating: 
Summary: The Insecure Attachments
Review: Having gone through this book, I sincerely felt that Green's book concerns about the inability of people, who trapped amidst the shower of so many diverse events, to correlate the events in their surroundings with their self. Somewhere in the book Bendrix compares the photograph of Henry Mile's father and Henry. Henry Mile's father's photograph bears the stamp of Victorian Confidence. He can grasp what is going on within himself as well as his surroundings. Here Maurice Bendrix totally looses control over his self and the events which he tries to interpret. He was torn between so many unconscious complexes and desires. He failed to explain the events with the stream of consciousness. And Sarah, since from childhood sees so many stepfathers and so many people to whom her mother is continously entering into wedding contracts. So she wishes for a love which can provide her constant source of happiness and permanent satisfaction. Even though she is vying for ordinary corrupt human love, finally she opts for a suprapersonal love which gives her maximum satisfaction. Both Bendrix and Sarah are trying for a kind of relationship which provides a source of happiness and maximum reliability. We can say that both are persons who look at the sea of unreliabilities with fear.Bendrix wants his love to be perennial. Not a single shock should alter his love towards Sarah. But at the same time he doubts that whether his love will last for a long time. A man who wishes to posses a thing for a long time, but strongly feels that he cannot own a thing permanently. His love towards sarah is mixed with a tincture of doubt and unreliability. Sometimes he tries to convince Sarah that our love will not last forever and at other times, he tries to hold her to his chest. I think his distrust stems from the inability to comprehend what is happening in his environment, since he was not able to grasp the total meaning the events which are happening in the modern world. Man has deep sense to understand the events that is happening in his surroundings. If the link between the environment and one's self is severed or weakened, he fails to grasp the meaning of life. Being desperate, he will try to interpret whatever he sees according to his own satisfaction. Bendrix sees Sarah's belief in Faith only as a pretension for her unquenced thirst for love of another person. He thinks that we are not satisfied by what we have, rather we want to have more and more... Bendrix compares Sarah's room with that of Henry's. Henry's room is so tidy and ordered, while that of Sarah's is a real mess. So Bendrix links Sarah's unsatisfaction with her discontinuation of the relationship. Maurice Bendrix feels that the failure to bring forth a permanent relationship is the cause for the birth of faith. Man cannot have fruitful,long lasting relationships, but he wants the same all the time. In order to satisfy his craving he created a God and and illusion that he believes in Him since he was not able to get the feedback. By believing in a faith and a God which he cannot judge, man at least finds a solution for the uncertainities which spreads in his environment. Greene ends his novel by trying to prevent strongly (or weakly) the submerging of the protagonist's reason in the sea of faith. We can explain Sarah's final faith in God only by her continous thirst for a permanent relationship. She is getting absolute peace only after submitting herself to God. She fails to grasp that all human relationships are more or less contaminated. We can only say that Sarah broke the relationship only because she was not able to get permanent happiness in human relationships.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: Love and romance--where does one end and the other pick up? When does it become detructive and when does it save?
Rating:
Summary: Before and after the one and only Love of a Lifetime
Review: I was impressed by the essence content of this very short book. I have never made as many notes from other books as I made from "Affair". Snip: (...)
Rating:
Summary: ouch
Review: This touched a big nerve. If you've never loved anyone like this, Greene shows you what its like. If you have, then he reminds you what its like. Fantastic characters, weak where everyone is, and strong when required.
Rating:
Summary: touching, dear, lovely
Review: I enjoy it very much, for it is deep. It is worthwhile to rent it and share it with your dear friends.
Rating:
Summary: Greene's Book Is A Classic
Review: This is one of the very few books that I have been assigned to read and have gone back to read it later for enjoyment. Graham Greene the author, who I am only recently comfortable distinguishing from the actor Graham Greene (the friendly Indian from "Dances with Wolves"),in this book writes a story that captures so much of so many moments from modern times. It takes place in London during wartime, but is as true today as I am sure that it was then. The story of recquited love and loss is touching in this novel, and Greene creates a world that lives and breathes. An enjoyable touching and honest tale of the modern sentiment and situation. Well done.
Rating:
Summary: Close to perfect
Review: Thank God for the Contemporary Lit professor who made us read "The End of the Affair." Since that first, blissful reading, I've reread this novel at least six times, and I always end up giving away my copy to a fellow reader. The story seems so simple: Bendrix, a self-absorbed bachelor writer, has an affair with Sarah, the wife of Bendrix's friend, Henry. The relationship sparks love inside of Bendrix, and reawakens passions in Sarah, until a bomb falls, leading Sarah to make a deal with God: if God lets Bendrix live, she'll give him up forever. After Bendrix's miraculous recovery, Sarah keeps her promise, even as she tries to disbelieve in God: if, after all, there is no God, then her deal doesn't count. The harder she seeks atheism, the stronger her faith becomes, even to the point where miracles appear to happen in her presence. The characters in this novel--and the myriad relationships between them--are seamlessly drawn. Also, Greene handles the combination of past and present tenses, plus excerpts from Sarah's diary, with a master's touch and clarity. Best of all, you can take "The End of the Affair" on any level you want, from a simple wartime romance to a complex spiritual fable, and it succeeds regardless. One of Greene's contemporaries is quoted on the jacket, calling "The End of the Affair," one of the best novels of our time "In this or any language." That author's name is William Faulkner. Heady praise for one of the Twentieth Century's best novels.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful prose
Review: Beautifully written, elegant prose. The characters are very well constructed; the story is a bit repetitive, but Greene's writing is so rich that repetition is concealed. I am not able to make an expert's analysis on a book of this kind, I'm just an average reader, but from the very first page you tell the difference...you can see it's by a great author. I enjoyed this book very much.
Rating:
Summary: Deeply moving
Review: Graham Greene's novel works upon so many levels. Perhaps most compelling to my mind is how starkly he portrays (as is typical for his style) the moral dilemma confronted by Sarah. Believing that her lover, Maurice Bendrix, was killed in a bombing raid, she drops to her knees and prays that if God spares his life, she shall forsake Bendrix. Bendrix is spared, and Sarah then is forced to confront her end of the bargain, which she finds to be an unbearable weight, and thereby breaks it. Though the choices are portrayed in the starkest of terms, Greene nonetheless imparts a beautiful sensitivity to his novel. Sarah, Maurice, and Sarah's husband are all strikingly human, all forced into a series of dilemmas by their prior decisions made generally upon only rash impulse. In this work, Greene again seeks to write almost for cinematic adaptation; the development he achieves upon multiple levels with a comparative economy of words is striking. In sum, this is both a literarily pleasing book and a deeply affecting story...a moral parable even.
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