Monday, February 8, 2016

What I'm Reading: End of the Affair - Graham Greene

I used to do a lot of audiobooks.  Once, when looking for a new recommendation - I saw that Colin Firth had just finished reading for "End of the Affair" because he found the book so poignant.  My library didn't have it and my commute has since changed (most days I take the train and don't drive) so I'm back to print reading.  Anyways, I was in the mood for a compelling fiction read and this one did not disappoint.   I read it in record time and thought it was both high in drama and a page-turner and very smart with some excellent lines.  Definitely one I recommend.

"The desire to possess in some, like avarice: in others the desire to surrender, to lose the sense of responsibility, the wish to be admired.  Sometimes just the wish to be able to talk, to unburden yourself to someone who won't be bored.  The desire to find again a father or a mother.  And of course under it all the biological motive."

"When I began to write our story down, I thought I was writing a record of hate, but somehow the hate has got mislaid and all I know is that in spite of her mistakes and her unreliability, she was better than most.  It's just as well that one of us should believe in her: she never did in herself."

"If I were writing a novel I would end here: a novel, I used to think, has to end somewhere, but I'm beginning to believe my realism has been at fault all these years, for nothing in life now ever seems to end.  Chemists tell you matter is never completely destroyed, and mathematicians tell you that if you halve each pace in crossing a room, you will never reach the opposite wall, so what an optimist I would be if I thought that this story ended here."

""I'm sorry," she said, and I had the impression that she meant it.  She had a lot to learn, in the way of books and music and how to dress and talk, but she would never have to learn humanity"