Reviews

Audible audio performed by Colin Firth
3.5***

Maurice Bendrix recalls the affair he had with the married Sarah Miles. Bendrix is a writer, and he uses his experience exploring characters’ motivations and emotions to look at the attraction, passion and ultimate love-hate relationship he had with Sarah.

And that push-pull of the love-hate relationship is at the center of this little novel. Greene repeatedly has Bendrix reference it:
“So this is a record of hate far more than of love, …”
“Hatred seems to operate the same glands as love; it even produces the same actions.”
“I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end….It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.”
“My desire now was nearer hatred than love,..”
(All these quotes are in the first 50 pages.)

And this pretty much describes my relationship with this novel. On the one hand I love the way Greene writes, and the way he draws these characters, revealing them little by little, so that the reader eventually forms her own opinion about them. They are complex and conflicted, sometimes obtuse, often wary and prone to prevarication.

On the other hand, I really disliked all of them. I didn’t care about Bendrix and his obsession with Sarah (whether to love her or to hate her). I didn’t understand Sarah’s motivations at all. Always dissatisfied and constantly searching for “something more, ” she seemed to just walk through life, leaving a trail of destruction behind her. And yet, I’m supposed to believe that she was deeply religious – or becoming so – and sought atonement and forgiveness.

Colin Firth does a fine job narrating the audiobook. He’s a talented actor and breathes life into Bendrix’s sad tale of obsession and loss. He almost made me like Maurice!