cover image The Third Woman: The Secret Passion That Inspired ""The End of the Affair""

The Third Woman: The Secret Passion That Inspired ""The End of the Affair""

William Cash. Carroll & Graf Publishers, $25 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-7867-0812-3

While Graham Greene, private though he was, has few posthumous secrets left, journalist Cash's investigation into the central love affair of Greene's womanizing lifeDwith the fabulously wealthy socialite Catherine Walston, which began in 1946 and lasted for nearly 15 tumultuous yearsDdoes uncover some surprising new revelations. For example, despite their obsessive Catholicism, it's a surprise to read that the married Greene once exchanged wedding vows with Catherine in a secret ceremony in Tunbridge Wells. However, as one continues to read what Cash has skillfully uncovered, the exchange of vows appear consistent with Greene ""as a Catholic fatalist."" Certainly, their affair fueled Greene's creativity, and it is during these years that he wrote much of his best work, Cash argues. Specifically, he continues, it catalyzed Greene's guilt-rife romantic novel, The End of the Affair, and his aim here is to uncover the full background."" Cash, a former correspondent for the London Times, has sifted through such recently available material as Greene's 1,200 love letters to Catherine and her diaries. Cash also interviewed numerous people who knew them both, including Greene's widow, son and daughter and his last mistress, and he visited the various sites of their liaisons, notably Walston's cottage on a remote Irish island, Greene's Capri villa and the stately home of Catherine's husband. Although Cash's level of literary criticism doesn't match his claim for ""the creative debt that literature owes to adultery,"" his research gets as close to the heart of the matter as one can with the enigmatic Greene. For the novelist's fans, this is a necessary adjunct to biographies by Norman Sherry, W.J. West and Michael Shelden. (Nov.)