The End of the Affair

Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is Catholic guilt somersaults for a lapse Catholic reader. Much like his novels set in more exotic locales, infidelity, guilt, love, relationships, and events of a more momentous impact such as World War II figure prominently, but this is perhaps, the most intimate account of doomed lovers struggling with love, faith, and morality in a bourgeois setting, with both God's love (agape) and human interpersonal notions of love battling it out. Although I prefer Greene's non-Britain settings, it was refreshing to see his somewhat expected character types in London during the War as the backdrop for a conflict of epic scale (God's existence, what does it mean to love another person or experience the love of God) just as the humor and autobiographical elements of the novel reveal more of Greene's comic sensibilities and willingness to perhaps mock himself however lightly. Even someone writing about romance and the search for human connection knew how to use humor effectively in this carefully and richly worded novel, imbued with so much meaning that even some of the superstitious Catholic 'miracle' hints can be forgiven.