Graham Greene

A few days ago, I finished The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene. It's a short book (then again, anything's short after Rand) but it packs a heck of a punch. (I have not seen the movei, made in 1999 (I think), so I can't comment on that.)

Graham Greene (1904-1991) was a Catholic novelist, whose life spanned the entirety of the twentieth century. The End of the Affair is one of his four "Catholic" novels, focused primarily on faith. The main character is Maurice Bendrix, a writer, who befriends a woman while investigating his next novel. Despite her marriage, they begin a lengthy affair. The reader only hears of the affair through flashbacks. Bendrix, for almost the entirety of the novel, is angry at Sarah for leaving him and he looks back on their affair to try to find an answer to why she ended the it so abruptly.

Bendrix is consumed by hatred for Sarah and jealousy of her husband. He hires a private investigator and soon learns that he was not the only man she cheated on her husband with - there have been others. His hatred grows and there is little talk of faith, for this man has none.

It is not until the PI absconds with Sarah's journal that Bendrix finally understands. For me, this journal was the selling point of the novel, for this is a woman in agonizing pain, trying to speak to God...

"What do you love most? If I believed in you, I suppose I'd believe in the immortal soul, but is that what you love? Can you really see it there under the skin? Even a God can't love something that doesn't exist, he can't love something he cannot see. When he looks at me, does he something I can't see? It must be lovely if he is able to love it. That's asking me to believe too much, that there's anything lovely in me. I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn in 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. But what are you supposed to love then in the bitch and the fake?" (p. 80-81, Penguin Books, 2004).

This story is so amazingly raw and the pain is so very real for both of these characters. Eventually, Bendrix learns the truth about Sarah and his hate eases towards her. But he cannot bring himself to truly believe in a God.

If the Catholic-ness of the book turns you off, don't depair. There is very little Catholic about this; it is more about faith in general. I've never read anything so powerful but yet simple and unpretentious. I highly recommend it.