- Paperback: 128 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (25 Mar 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140185429
- ISBN-13: 978-0140185423
- Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 12.5 x 0.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,229,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Loser Takes All (Vintage Classics)
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"A great writer who spoke brilliantly to a whole generation." - Alec Guinness
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
'In a class by himself-the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-centuryman's consciousness and anxiety' William Golding
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an undemanding short story designed as entertainment pure and simple, without the depth of Greene's serious novels. It is light family fare, and instantly forgettable.
The story is about a dull accountant called Bertram, who finds himself by chance gifted a luxurious honeymoon by his employer. He spends time in a casino, and starts winning big. This affects his relationship with his wife, which is the main focus of the story.
It is compelling and well told and, undemanding as it is, can be easily read in one sitting.
Format:Paperback
I picked this copy up in the library shortly after having finished Brighton Rock and, to say I was disappointed, is an understatement.
The story is short, which is its only saving grace, and tells the story of what can happen if you get carried away in a casino. The characters were insipid and dull, and, by halfway through I had given up caring what happened to them.
To be perfectly blunt, I didn't really see the point of the book, and I think I only finished it because it was so short and I hoped it might improve by the end. It didn't. If this was the only Graham Greene book I had tried, I wouldn't bother with another and I definitely wouldn't recommend it.
The story is short, which is its only saving grace, and tells the story of what can happen if you get carried away in a casino. The characters were insipid and dull, and, by halfway through I had given up caring what happened to them.
To be perfectly blunt, I didn't really see the point of the book, and I think I only finished it because it was so short and I hoped it might improve by the end. It didn't. If this was the only Graham Greene book I had tried, I wouldn't bother with another and I definitely wouldn't recommend it.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Quick and Fun
6 Jun 2005
Format:Paperback
This slight Graham Greene novel is really more of a long short story--I read virtually the entire thing on a two-hour flight to New York City. But Greene is still able to infuse his story and characters with the moral significance that infuses all of his work. What happens in this novel really seems to *matter* in a way that it wouldn't in the hands of another author. Greene was great at making the most innocuous of situations feel full of portent; it's as if the character's moral fate will be decide once and for all by whether or not they take that last trip to the gaming table, or have that last drink, or go through with that meaningless one-night stand. It's this quality of Greene's that make his "entertainments" so satifsying to literature lovers: they have all of the attributes of the most thrilling page-turner, but the reader doesn't have to feel like he needs to sacrifice a love for style and substance in order to enjoy it.
Not one of Greene's most profound works, but very entertaining.
Not one of Greene's most profound works, but very entertaining.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
A Clever Thought Experiment
15 Jun 2002
Format:Paperback
Graham Greene's 1955 novella, "Loser Takes All," is a clever thought experiment in which love, morality, and ethics are all brought to bear on the early days of a married relationship. One of Greene's most appealing moves in the book is his delineation of character. The people who populate the novella are character types struggling to become characters - to find individuality and meaning in a world whose sole virtue seems to be money.
"Loser Takes All" begins in Monte Carlo. An English couple, Bertram, a fortyish accountant with a dead end career; and Cary, his twentyish fiance are on the verge of marriage - but they've been sidetracked. Initially planning on a small church service, Bertram is called into a meeting with his abstracted and unapproachable boss, Dreuther. Although Bertram isn't well-off, Dreuther talks him into moving his marriage plans to Monte Carlo, where Dreuther will rendezvous with them, and bring them back to England on his yacht. The action of the novella shows how this change of plans affects absolutely everything in Bertram and Cary's lives.
This is a short work, but it is packed with important and compelling themes. Greene was an absolute craftsman of language and situation, and the major themes that his longer works explore are found even in this short entertainment. Human relationships are central to the novella - the central relationship between Bertram and Cary is affected by Bertram's relationship with Dreuther, Dreuther's with 'another' of the firm's shareholders, Blixon. Greene asks how sympathies are constructed and maintained in good times and in bad.
Money and chance are also extremely important to the overarching theme of gambling and roulette. Characters like Bertram and character types like Phillippe and Bird's Nest illustrate the tensions in viewing life's progression as a matter of necessity or one of chance. Again, "Loser Takes All" is a short work, and is valuable as a kind of synopsis of the issues Greene's impressive literary corpus consistently engages with. The three star rating is because, in the context of Greene's body of work alone, "Loser Takes All" is a good piece, but not a great one.
The Winner Becomes the Loser Becomes the Winner
30 April 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a tight little book, novella-length really, about a modest, comfort-inclined accountant, Bertram, whose plan for a budget wedding and honeymoon with his fiance, Cary, are thrown up in the air when one of Bertram's firm's owners, nicknamed "Gom" for "Grand Old Man", suggests that Bertram and Cary instead sail to Monte Carlo on his yacht and wed there.
Bertram and Cary take the ride, which takes them out of the element in which they thrived together. They get in over their heads at their hotel and casino in Monte Carlo when Gom fails to show up on time. Bertram, though, develops a "system" and begins to win big in the casino and plots a kind of blindside revenge on Gom.
The whole story is an unhinging of Bertram and his relationship with Cary. The undercurrent is class. Gom's 8th floor office in the clouds, his disdain for Bertram's modest wedding plan and offhanded suggestion of the yacht and Monte Carlo, his failure to show up for the wedding, and the clubbiness among all three of the firm's co-owners all depict a gulf between the Goms of the world and the Bertrams. Bertram's winnings suddenly put him in an advantaged position, but it's also a temptation. And his advantaged position is no more earned or deserved than Gom's birthright was earned or deserved.
The temptation is to see it all as a story of "money can't buy happiness." But there's always more to it than that with Graham Greene.
This isn't one of my favorite Greene books. He called some of his books "entertainments". I'd put this one in that class. I enjoyed reading it, it made me think, but it's not The Power and the Glory, or even The Comedians.
Bertram and Cary take the ride, which takes them out of the element in which they thrived together. They get in over their heads at their hotel and casino in Monte Carlo when Gom fails to show up on time. Bertram, though, develops a "system" and begins to win big in the casino and plots a kind of blindside revenge on Gom.
The whole story is an unhinging of Bertram and his relationship with Cary. The undercurrent is class. Gom's 8th floor office in the clouds, his disdain for Bertram's modest wedding plan and offhanded suggestion of the yacht and Monte Carlo, his failure to show up for the wedding, and the clubbiness among all three of the firm's co-owners all depict a gulf between the Goms of the world and the Bertrams. Bertram's winnings suddenly put him in an advantaged position, but it's also a temptation. And his advantaged position is no more earned or deserved than Gom's birthright was earned or deserved.
The temptation is to see it all as a story of "money can't buy happiness." But there's always more to it than that with Graham Greene.
This isn't one of my favorite Greene books. He called some of his books "entertainments". I'd put this one in that class. I enjoyed reading it, it made me think, but it's not The Power and the Glory, or even The Comedians.
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