Michael Kitchen was masterly

I actually chose this version over the Colin Firth one (though I’m sure he’s good too) and I wasn’t disappointed. Michael Kitchen’s voice is perfect for this, he really inhabits the character of Bendrix: the cold, rain soaked, hate filled anti-hero of a misty and bleak post war Clapham.

Greenie’s story? I had forgotten just how utterly angst ridden he was about Catholicism and redemption and guilt and love and forgiveness and prayer and God and all the rest of it. It’s beautifully written but I found that pretty tiring and hard going after a while, as Graham Greene worked out his agony - again. But that’s my bad, I should have remembered - that’s what you get in all his novels.

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Beautifully read

I'm not normally a Graham Greene fan but with Michael Kitchen reading it was a wonderful story.

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1 person found this helpful

A Literary Delight

Greene was a truly unique author whose career provided us with a few undeniable classics such as the screenplay for the "The Third Man" and produced many works which continue to be revisited today - with 2011's "Brighton Rock" film a topical example.

In this novel, with echoes of the intensity of Wuthering Heights, Greene gives a truly compelling narrative of the lifeline of a relationship that is both pure and savage at the same time. An excellent reading that captures the soul of a wonderful book that is a must for anyone working their way through modern classics.

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Must read

This is a wonderfully depressing book, beautifully written and full of raw emotion. Michael Kitchen's performance is perfect for this post war time book about love and loss. I must read more Graham Greene!

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Graham Green at his best

Revisited this after reading book years ago. Audible version well read and lived up to writing. Highly recommended.

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8 people found this helpful

Catholic Guilt

A brilliant performance from Michael Kitchen, his voice resonating with the ambiguous lies of the first person narrative.

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First class narrator

The narrator takes a bit of getting used to but overall I thought he was superb

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A “film noir”

I like and recognise Graham Greene, who here writes an intense story, set across the mid forties, with a sparse and focused cast and a sense of a fatalism. Love, hurt and betrayal challenge societal faith and decorum, darkly influenced perhaps by the war years. Vivid emotions mask a fierce sexuality, that would now be described overtly but is no less powerful !
A novel of its time and a Graham Green classic.

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Brilliantly read by Michael Kitchen

Moving and thought provoking account of a painful episode with Catholic themes of hope and redemption, sacrifice and guilt. The story moves between 1939-46 and is told in the first person.
Michael Kitchen brilliantly and accurately narrates this powerful and moving story

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Effortlessly good performance of a Diary of Hate

Michael Kitchen (Foyle's War, To Play the King, Morse, etc.) barely seems to be reading at all, his performance breathes such life and spontaneity into Graham Greene's work. One of Greene's few truly domestic works, The End of the Affair has been shown on the big screen twice, and in a BBC radio play, but this version is in my opinion the best interpretation I've encountered. Kitchen gives perfect weight to both the narrator (Maurice Bendrix)'s rather bloodless cynicism and his unstable and growing passion. Bendrix's subjective and occasionally unreliable narration of his own "Diary of Hate" - his affair with Sarah, a civil servant's bored wife, amid the bombs of Blitz London, and their tortured and tortuous reunion in the more strained days of postwar austerity - is fundamental to establishing the tone of the work. Shot through with Greene's signature themes of love, loss, God and faith, I absolutely recommend this audiobook for anyone with an ear for a rock-solid performance by an outstanding, and subtle, voice artist.

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