This is the oldest of the books that I am listing among my favorites of 2012. My requirement is that I read them in 2012, not that they were written in 2012. One of my goals this year was to read more old books. And I certainly did that. But I was disappointed in many of the older books I read. Some of the disappointment is because I did not work hard enough to understand the background (one of the comments on my review of Alice in Wonderland essentially said that I just didn’t get all of the jokes.)
It is certainly true that not all literature that is great travels well through time. But The End of the Affair did travel well (albeit only about 60 years.) Tragedy, love and romance may be particularly easy subjects to travel through time. A good audiobook often helps.
Takeaway: Hate is a way to know that you love.
The problem with reading is that no matter how much you do, there is so much you will never get to. There are more than 1 million new books published each year, just in English. And then there are the thousands of a classics that even a serious reader will never get around to reading.
So I am glad when I run across one of the beautiful books accidentally. I would have never picked up The End of the Affair on my own. I thought I had watched the movie, but I had not (although I will now.)
Audible.com has been commissioning “A List Actors” to read classic books. The Wizard of Oz read by Anne Hathaway, that I read a couple week ago, was from this collection. And luckily for me, Audible.com has been giving away a couple of the books to promote the series.
In The End of the Affair, Colin Firth reads the melancholy and beautifully haunting story of a couple having an affair at the end of World War II in London. This is a tragedy, and like all tragedies, nothing turns out the way you want it to.
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