The End of the Affair
By Grahame Greene
I am afraid this is a review that will never end. For I know next year I’ll come to it and think differently of it. Not in the sense of how it is written, but what it wants to say to me. I’m not normally the type to go back for a second reading, but I just know I’m not done with it.
Reading its first few chapters feels like staring at a well-known painting. You don’t know that you like it, but something about it beguiles. And then you get to the later chapters, and the story literally unfolds before you.
I had no idea of the kind of competition that existed in the book. Or how such a non-character, hardly described, consumes so much space in the lives of the characters, stirring up so much turmoil and despair without even lifting a finger. I’d say I was thoroughly surprised.
Greene is so masterful at exploring the inner corners of the mind of his characters that I felt like swimming in the sea of their emotions. How many of us have twisted something good to something rotten just because we hinted its end like the jealous Bendrix? How many of us, at a moment of desperation, have made a similar plea to the surreal as the fallible and winsome Sarah? I heard every argument that led to a vulnerable belief. I was privy to every grappling. The characters were relatable in that I understood their grappling.
Back in college, for philosophy class, our professor had us read The Chronicles of Narnia or the much shorter but more difficult, The End of the Affair or The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I had chosen Narnia. Good thing too. I don’t see understanding this at 19.
A hare read in that I was as alert and attentive as one while reading it. But I’m glad I paced myself reading this too. That makes it a tortoise and a hare read then. This book has kept me thinking for a long time after I turned the last page. I guess it is safe to say it is my best read this year.
#thetortoiseandtheharereadingclub
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