THE END OF THE AFFAIR. (1999) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE END OF THE AFFAIR. (1999) BASED ON THE BOOK BY GRAHAM GREENE.
WRITTEN, DIRECTED AND CO-PRODUCED BY NEIL JORDAN.
STARRING JULIANNE MOORE, RALPH FIENNES, STEPHEN REA, JASON ISAACS, JAMES BOLAM AND IAN HART.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Love doesn’t end, just because we don’t see each other.’

I love this film, characterised by gorgeous scenes of endless heavy rainfall in post-war Britain and a rather spiffing shot of Ralph Fiennes bare backside captured splendidly in mid-coitus. Phwoar. The more I see of this guy, the more I fancy him.  

I saw the film on the big screen back in 1999 when it was first released. I’ve had fond memories of it ever since, though it certainly wouldn’t appeal to lovers of action movies as it’s quite slow. That suits me though, being quite a slow-moving person myself, lol.

There’s a bit too much religion in it; that’s possibly the only aspect of the film I didn’t enjoy, but otherwise, it’s as damn near perfect as anything else you’ll see. It’ll appeal to fans of history and thwarted love affairs, heavy rainfall in cinema and Ralph Fiennes’s lovely bare arse doing the old in-out, in-out. What’s not to love?

Ralph- that’s ‘Rafe’ to you!- plays Maurice Bendrix, a moderately successful English novelist in wartime and post-wartime Britain. Well, he’s had one of his books made into a film, so, if that’s moderate success, I’ll have some, please. Beats obscurity and starving in the proverbial garret any day!

Anyway, one rainy night after the war, Maurice bumps into Henry Miles (Stephen Rea), a politician with whose wife, the beautiful Sarah, Maurice had a raging affair during the war.

Seeing the cuckolded Henry again encourages Maurice to re-kindle his acquaintance- and romance- with Sarah, subtly played by Julianne Moore. It’s not difficult to fool poor Henry, Gawd bless his naive, too-trusting buttons.

If ever a man was downbeat, downtrodden and expecting to be made a fool of, it’s poor old Henry. Maurice and Sarah are taking the actual piss by the way in which they practically have sex under Henry’s nose and get away with it. Even in Henry’s own house, on Henry’s own couch, of all places…!

Henry needs to grow a pair, seriously, but I think Henry thinks he’s punching above his weight in marrying Sarah, and is therefore grateful that she consents to stay married to him while still having her little affairs.

Anyway, Maurice has always wondered why Sarah broke off her affair with him during the war years, when London was having the bejeesus bombed out of her by nasty Uncle Adolf and Company; now, in 1946, having inveigled his way back into Sarah and Henry’s lives again quite by chance, he might just finally get to find out.

Three members of the eventual cast of the Harry Potter films are to be found here; Ralph Fiennes as Maurice/Lord Voldemort; Jason Isaacs as the rather surplus to requirements priest/Lucius Malfoy and Ian Hart as the private eye Parkis/Professor Quirrell from HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE.

I disliked intensely the attempt to make Julianne Moore’s character Sarah into some kind of a saint at the end. As the friend with whom I recently re-watched the film pronounced uncompromisingly, she wasn’t a saint, she was a shameless and adulterous slag. I don’t mean to slut-shame, by the way, lol. I’m just telling it like it is.

I love this film, a rain-spattered, doomed wartime romance- positively the best kind of doomed romance there is!- and I have particularly fond memories of watching it in the cinema, so it’ll always get a thumbs-up from me. Women will probably relish all the soul-searching and nudie Ralph Fiennes; insensitive males will more than likely just switch over and watch the footy. Their loss, folks…       

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1781994234

WRITING ‘THE YEAR OF MAX AND JULIET,’ FORMERLY KNOWN AS ‘THE DEVIANTS,’ BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

WRITING ‘THE YEAR OF MAX AND JULIET,’ FORMERLY KNOWN AS ‘THE DEVIANTS.’

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I started writing this book in the autumn of 2013 and finished it in March of 2014. Back then, it was known as THE DEVIANTS. It was my first full-length novel and I wrote it intending it for publication.

Prior to writing it, I had been penning poems on the subject of bad sex and failed relationships and performing them live in Dublin pubs and other spoken word venues. (Okay, so it was mostly pubs.) I was attending a writer’s group at the time (sporadically, due to childcare issues) and writing stories and poems there too.

I’d also been writing little comic ‘Letter to the Editor’ type pieces under various false names for the METRO, at the time Dublin’s biggest free daily newspaper. Loads of extremely friendly young Brazilian men and women would stand on street corners in the morning and hand you your free copy with a beaming smile as you hurried past to work, school or college.

The METRO, which started life as the METRO-HERALD, is sadly defunct now, which is probably just as well. In the current atmosphere of coronavirus mistrust, the powers-that-be would probably have found some reason why someone’s distributing a free newspaper on the streets at rush hour was bad for public health.

Anyway, as enjoyable and bohemian as my writing life was at the time, I began to experience a really strong urge to write something bigger and more lasting. My own feelings of mortality probably had a lot to do with my writing the book at that particular time. I wasn’t getting any younger and I wanted to leave something of mine for future generations to enjoy, or revile, as they chose, before it was too late.

Every writer who’s ever lived probably knows that feeling, the feeling of running out of time and wanting to get so much down on paper before you pop your clogs. Does any writer ever feel that he or she has written ‘enough?’ I doubt it. There’s no such thing as ‘enough’ to a writer.

Probably even Stephen King, the most productive writer who ever lived, is occasionally plagued by feelings of ‘I should be doing more; I should be WRITING more!!!’ Maybe even he too feels the pain of a wasted day, a day spent pricking about on the phone or on social media or watching DVDs when you should be frantically committing words to paper or your laptop.

Oh God, the pain of those awful days! How many times have I guilted myself, reproached myself or mentally beaten myself up for not writing! For being too tired, too emotional, too frazzled after a long day, too lazy or just too disinclined to sit down and write. Some days, after working my ass off, I take a genuinely well-deserved break. All work and no play, after all. But the days I allow myself to just fritter away, well, I always regret those, and rightly so.

I started specifically writing THE DEVIANTS after a trip to the Dublin Writers’ Museum on Parnell Square in late 2013. After seeing all those fabulous old original copies of Bram Stoker’s DRACULA from the actual nineteenth century in their locked display cases, I became determined to leave something of my own behind me when it’s my time to go. My work mightn’t ever make it into the museum, but at the very least I might feature on someone’s Kindle or bookshelf. I went home and started writing. Properly, this time. This time, I was in it for the long haul.

So I wrote the story that had been inside me for so long, waiting to come out; the story of a lonely young woman, Juliet, who meets a lonely married man called Max and starts an ultimately destructive affair with him, an affair that breaks his marriage wide open and leaves Juliet a hollow shell of the person she once was.

Max lives in a big comfortable house in the suburbs with his talented artist wife, his two beautiful daughters and their dog Bruce, but Juliet has a ‘grotty flat’ in an area near or off Parnell Street, just a stone’s throw from the Irish Writers’ Museum.

In the book, Juliet works in a bakery-slash-coffee shop on Parnell Street and she often sits in the fabulous Garden of Remembrance when the weather permits to eat her lunch, or to just sit and daydream about Max, something she does a lot of.

I’ve often sat in there too and felt completely over-awed by the hugely magnificent statue of the Children of Lir or trailed my fingers in the cool blue waters of the pond. (This was back in the days when we were still allowed to touch stuff…)

That whole area up by the Garden and the Museum also houses the Irish Writers’ Centre and the Hugh Lane Art Gallery, and it just speaks to me so clearly of Max and Juliet every time I go there, or to Chapters’ Bookstore on Parnell Street. (I have Max and Juliet meeting in a bookstore on Parnell Street, only I’ve called it Quills.)

Believe it or not, I’d written their story as an actual short story first. It was published in Ireland’s BIG ISSUES magazine and I was so inspired by it (inspired by my own work, lol, what am I like?!) that I decided to make their amour fou, their ‘crazy love,’ the subject of my first full-length novel. I still feel inclined to regard it as the best thing I ever wrote and I still feel that big things, good big things, will happen for it one day.

I just remembered that I actually fell out with a good friend for about two years over THE DEVIANTS. I was serialising it on my blog, a chapter a week, and this friend read it and said it had too much sex in it. She said that, if I took all the sex out, I might be able to interest publishers in it. Anyone who’s read the book will know that the sex is a genuinely integral part of it.

I was so hurt by her remarks about my book-baby that we fell out, or at least I stopped talking to her for about two years, after which we sort of drifted back in to talking to each other again, mainly because I felt very guilty about what I’d done in cutting off relations with her.

That lady is sadly deceased now, and if I had my time again, I would try to handle her criticisms differently. More maturely, maybe. I certainly wouldn’t stop speaking to her again for two years over a book, even if it was my first attempt at sending one out into the world…!

Anyway, I discovered the wonderful world of Kindle Direct Publishing in the winter of 2014 and submitted THE DEVIANTS straightaway. The best review it received likened it to Nabokov’s LOLITA and the worst one advised me to stop writing, immediately and forever, after inflicting such a rubbishy FIFTY SHADES OF GREY knock-off on the world. Heh-heh-heh.

Needless to say, I ignored this advice and, seven years later, am still writing away like a mad yoke, still trying to leave a completed legacy of writings (if a writer’s legacy can ever be said to be ‘completed’) for my readers in the future.

I have two writing tips to share with you before I go: 1. Start writing, and 2. Keep writing, no matter what. I hope that Max and Juliet will outlive me, and that people are reading about them and identifying with them long after I’ve shuffled off my mortal coil and gone to join the angels above. Or the devils below, it’s all good…!

THE YEAR OF MAX AND JULIET is FREE, FREE, FREE from the 15^th to the 19^th (inclusive) of September. Please download your FREE COPY here!

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Max, a bored and unhappy middle-aged man, meets a younger woman, Juliet, by chance in a bookshop. Instantly attracted to each other, they begin an affair. Juliet quickly realises that Max is not like most other men sexually. Lonely, and craving the affection she has been denied throughout her life, she allows herself to become Max’s sexual plaything- and punchbag- in exchange for his love. Max takes full advantage of Juliet’s friendless state and coerces her into doing things that leave her feeling degraded and violated. Afraid of losing Max, Juliet is unable to say no to his demands, and so the game continues until the situation blows up in their faces, and both Max and Juliet have no choice but to confront the consequences of their messed-up love.

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A collection of short, rude funny sex-poems. No stone left unturned in this hilariously bitchy and wickedly honest look at sex today. No, that’s it, nothing else. Just sex. Well, maybe a few bizarre fetishes, but that’s still just sex, isn’t it…? We’ll go with sex. Let’s just say sex. This book is about sex. It’s a sex-book…!

FIFTY FILTHY-DIRTY SEX-POEMS YOU MUST READ BEFORE I DIE: ADULT POETRY BY DUBLIN WRITER SANDRA HARRIS.

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THE DEVIANTS. A NOVEL OF SEXUAL PERVERSION AND FUCKED-UP LOVE BY KINDLE AUTHOR SANDRA HARRIS.

Max, a bored and unhappy middle-aged man, meets a younger woman, Juliet, by chance in a bookshop. Instantly attracted to each other, they begin an affair. Juliet quickly realises that Max is not like most other men sexually. Lonely, and craving the affection she has been denied throughout her life, she allows herself to become Max’s sexual plaything- and punchbag- in exchange for his love. Max takes full advantage of Juliet’s friendless state and coerces her into doing things that leave her feeling degraded and violated. Afraid of losing Max, Juliet is unable to say no to his demands and so the game continues until the situation blows up in their faces and both Max and Juliet have no choice but to face the consequences of their fucked-up love.

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FIFTY FILTHY-DIRTY SEX-POEMS YOU MUST READ BEFORE I DIE. BY KINDLE AUTHOR SANDRA HARRIS.

A collection of short, rude funny sex-poems. No stone left unturned in this hilariously bitchy and wickedly honest look at sex today. No, that’s it, nothing else. Just sex. Well, maybe a few bizarre fetishes, but that’s still just sex, isn’t it…? We’ll go with sex. Let’s just say sex. This book is about sex. It’s a sex-book…!

FIFTY FILTHY-DIRTY SEX-POEMS YOU MUST READ BEFORE I DIE.Kindle Edition

by Sandra Harris (Author)

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THE DEVIANTS- A NOVEL BY SANDRA HARRIS- IS FREE, FREE, FREE FROM AMAZON FROM 16TH UNTIL 20TH MARCH!!!

Max, a bored and unhappy middle-aged man, meets a younger woman, Juliet, by chance in a bookshop. Instantly attracted to each other, they begin an affair. Juliet quickly realises that Max is not like most other men sexually. Lonely, and craving the affection she has been denied throughout her life, she allows herself to become Max’s sexual plaything- and punchbag- in exchange for his love. Max takes full advantage of Juliet’s friendless state and coerces her into doing things that leave her feeling degraded and violated. Afraid of losing Max, Juliet is unable to say no to his demands and so the game continues until the situation blows up in their faces and both Max and Juliet have no choice but to face the consequences of their fucked-up love.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PPM16YM

THE DEVIANTS. A NOVEL BY SANDRA HARRIS.

Yes, this book has a lot of sex in it. After all, it deals with the murky, dirty, sleazy tacky world of extra-marital affairs, domestic abuse, kinky fucking, domination and submission, rape, addiction to pornography and swinging, and all in good old Catholic Ireland, too. It just wasn’t possible to write it without putting in the sex. But it’s not just a sex-book, and it’s most definitely not an erotic novel. What is it exactly, then? I can’t tell you that. You’d have to read the book yourself to fully appreciate its message. But you should read it. I’d go so far as to say that you need to read it. Enter the world of THE DEVIANTS, if only for a little while. Then, and only then, will you understand it. And love it. Best wishes, Sandra Harris.

Max, a bored and unhappy middle-aged man, meets a younger woman, Juliet, by chance in a bookshop. Instantly attracted to each other, they begin an affair. Juliet quickly realises that Max is not like most other men sexually. Lonely, and craving the affection she has been denied throughout her life, she allows herself to become Max’s sexual plaything- and punchbag- in exchange for his love. Max takes full advantage of Juliet’s friendless state and coerces her into doing things that leave her feeling degraded and violated. Afraid of losing Max, Juliet is unable to say no to his demands and so the game continues until the situation blows up in their faces and both Max and Juliet have no choice but to face the consequences of their fucked-up love.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based performance poet, novelist, film blogger, sex blogger and short story writer. She has given more than 200 performances of her comedy sex-and-relationship poems in different venues around Dublin, including The Irish Writers’ Centre, The International Bar, Toners’ Pub (Ireland’s Most Literary Pub), the Ha’penny Inn, Le Dernier Paradis at the Trinity Inn and The Strokestown Poetry Festival.

Her articles, short stories and poems have appeared in The Metro-Herald newspaper, Ireland’s Big Issues magazine, The Irish Daily Star, The Irish Daily Sun and The Boyne Berries literary journal. In August 2014, she won the ONE LOVELY BLOG award for her (lovely!) horror film review blog. She is addicted to buying books and has been known to bring home rain-washed tomes she finds on the street and give them a home.

She is the proud possessor of a pair of unfeasibly large bosoms. They have given her- and the people around her- infinite pleasure over the years. She adores the horror genre in all its forms and will swap you anything you like for Hammer Horror or JAWS memorabilia. She would also be a great person to chat to about the differences between the Director’s Cut and the Theatrical Cut of The Wicker Man. You can contact her at:

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PPM16YM

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THE DEVIANTS. A NOVEL BY SANDRA HARRIS. NOW AVAILABLE THIS CHRISTMAS TO BUY FROM AMAZON.

Max, a bored and unhappy middle-aged man, meets a younger woman, Juliet, by chance in a bookshop. Instantly attracted to each other, they begin an affair. Juliet quickly realises that Max is not like most other men sexually. Lonely, and craving the affection she has been denied throughout her life, she allows herself to become Max’s sexual plaything- and punchbag- in exchange for his love. Max takes full advantage of Juliet’s friendless state and coerces her into doing things that leave her feeling degraded and violated. Afraid of losing Max, Juliet is unable to say no to his demands and so the game continues until the situation blows up in their faces and both Max and Juliet have no choice but to face the consequences of their amour fou.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PPM16YM

THE DEVIANTS. A NOVEL BY SANDRA HARRIS. NOW AVAILABLE TO BUY FROM AMAZON.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PPM16YM