MikePadgett.com

The End of the Affair

• Graham Greene
• Vintage (first published 1951)
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Greene was in his writing prime when The End of the Affair was published. The book can nonetheless be considered a transitional piece: it’s an early prospect of the rich black humour the author would mine effectively in later works.

The novel is rather uneven. It describes in flashback and with extraordinary intensity the beginnings of a love affair between Bendrix the narrator and civil servant’s wife Sarah Miles. However, the denouement is somewhat more roughly carved, giving over much space to comic relief and muddled religious questions that do little to underscore Sarah’s predicament.

What Greene always excels at – and this is starkly obvious to readers living abroad – is the acute observation of the English middle class. The taut, serpentine machinations of this love affair are exacerbated by the ill-chosen silences of people who stay bound to the suffocating dogma of their society.