The End of the Affair is often considered among Greene's best novels. Writer Evelyn Waugh favorably reviewed the novel in a September 6, 1951 piece for The Month magazine. Waugh would later write, "Mr Greene has chosen another contemporary form, domestic, romantic drama of the type of Brief Encounter, and has transformed that in his own inimitable way." Waugh also noted that the story was “a singularly beautiful and moving one".[2] Alex Preston writing for The Independent had similar praise for Greene's book: "'The End of the Affair' is his masterpiece: an astonishing, painfully moving interrogation of the contradictions in a Catholicism he couldn't live without but struggled to live with."[3]
The novel was chosen by Robert McCrum for his list of the '100 Greatest Novels in English'.[2]
Writer Jonathan Franzen said that he considered E. M. Forster and Graham Greene overrated, in particular highlighting The End of the Affair.[4] However, he did also comment that he believed that part of the reason for this was his being American, as he said that many authors' brilliance is lost when it crosses the Atlantic. He said that he believed that the effect may have occurred with David Foster Wallace.
