Loser Takes All (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

by Graham Greene

Bertram had no belief in luck. He was not superstitious. A conspicuously unsuccessful assistant accountant, he was planning to get married for the second time. Quite quietly: St Luke's, Maida Hill, and then two weeks in Bournemouth. But Dreuther, a director of Bertram's firm, whimsically switches wedding and honeymoon to Monte Carlo. Inevitably Bertram visits the Casino. Inevitably he loses. Then suddenly his system starts working . . .

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• ISBN10: 0670000272
• ISBN13: 9780670000272
• Publish Date: 29 August 1957 (first published December 1955)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 18 January 2023
• Imprint: Penguin Group
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Language: English

Reviews

[brokentune]

I SUPPOSE the small greenish statue of a man in a wig on a horse is one of the famous statues of the world. I said to Cary, ‘Do you see how shiny the right knee is? It’s been touched so often for luck, like St Peter’s foot in Rome.’
She rubbed the knee carefully and tenderly as though she were polishing it.
‘Are you superstitious?’ I said. ‘
Yes.’
‘I’m not.’
‘I’m so superstitious I never walk under ladders. I throw salt over my right shoulder. I try not to tread on the cracks in pavements. Darling, you’re marrying the most superstitious woman in the world. Lots of people aren’t happy. We are. I’m not going to risk a thing.’

There is not much I can say about Loser Takes All other than it is a delightful story of a newlywed couple on honeymoon. I have heard Loser Takes All being compared to Coward's Private Lives and just for once I have to admit that this comparison also came to my mind when reading Greene's story.
However, where wit and humor and sheer slapstick in Private Lives shows a couple (or two) that is very sure of itself, Greene's approach is different: His story is based on a couple who isn't sure of anything at all, and in the course of the book, this uncertainty keeps the story interesting.

"ONE adapts oneself to money much more easily than to poverty: Rousseau might have written that man was born rich and is everywhere impoverished."