The End of the Affair
Set in London during and just after World War II, Graham Greene'sThe End of the Affairis a pathos-laden examination of a three-way collision between love of self, love of another, and love of God. The affair in question involves Maurice Bendrix, a solipsistic novelist, and a dutifully married woman, Sarah Miles. The lovers meet at a party thrown by Sarah's dreary civil-servant husband, and proceed to liberate each other from boredom and routine unhappiness. Reflecting on the ebullient beginnings of their romance,  Bendrix recalls: "There was never any question in those days of who  wanted whom--we were together in desire." Indeed, the affair goes on  unchecked for several years until, during an afternoon tryst, Bendrix  goes downstairs to look for intruders in his basement and a bomb falls on  the building. Sarah rushes down to find him lying under a fallen door,  and immediately makes a deal with God, whom she has never particularly  cared for. "I love him and I'll do anything if you'll make him  alive.... I'll give him up forever, only let him be alive with a  chance.... People can love each other without seeing each other, can't  they, they love You all their lives without seeing You."Bendrix, as evidenced by his ability to tell the story, is not dead,  merely unconscious, and so Sarah must keep her promise. She breaks off  the relationship without giving a reason, leaving Bendrix mystified and angry.  The only explanation he can think of is that she's left him for another  man. It isn't until years later, when he hires a private detective to  ascertain the truth, that he learns of her impassioned vow. Sarah  herself comes to  understand her move through a strange rationalization. Writing to God in her  journal, she says:You willed our separation, but he [Bendrix] willed it  too. He worked for it with his anger and his jealousy, and he worked for  it with his love. For he gave me so much love, and I gave him so much  love that soon there wasn't anything left, when we'd finished, but You.It's as though the pull toward faith were inevitable, if  incomprehensible--perhaps as punishment for her sin of adultery. In her  final years, Sarah's faith only deepens, even as she remains haunted by  the bombing and the power of her own attraction to God. Set  against the backdrop of a war-ravaged city,The End of the Affairis equally haunting as it lays forth the question of what constitutes love  in troubling, unequivocal terms.--Melanie Rehak--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.