Yes, time for another try with Graham Greene – after stalling on “The End of the Affair” I’ve had my confidence knocked with GG, which is a shame because I read several of his books in my teens and loved them. I also watched a really interesting documentary on him recently and couldn’t work out why I was struggling with his work. However, I picked up this slim novella as part of a 3-for-£2 deal in one of my local charity shops (the others were an Agatha Christie for middle child and Zola’s “The Ladies’ Paradise” for me – bargain!). It looked amusing and short and so I figured I would give it a go – and I’m glad I did!

loser
“Loser Takes All” tells the story of Bertram, a middle-aged accountant about to embark on his second marriage to Cary, 15 years his junior. He muddles along in a not-outstanding fashion in his firm until one day fate takes a hand, and he is summoned to the realms upstairs, for a meeting with the Grand Old Man (known as The Gom mostly in the book). After solving an intricate accounting problem, The Gom is impressed enough to decide that instead of a quiet church wedding and a week in Bournemouth, the couple will get married in Monte Carlo and honeymoon there. After persuading Cary, they head to Monte Carlo only to find that the Gom does not appear. After a frantic marriage ceremony, our happy couple are stranded in the South of France with no rich patron and no money. To survive, Bertram tries winning at the casino, and after many losses uses his accounting talents to devise a system which wins them a fortune. However, money cannot buy love and it seems that the marriage may be on the rocks owing to Bertram’s obsession the gambling. Can the last-minute arrival of The Gom save things?

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Thankfully, I *loved* this novella. It’s witty, well-written, the characters come to life instantly and it has a lot to say in a short work. There are plenty of complications in the form of business rivals and shareholders, along with a penniless young man who attracts Cary for a while until she is allowed to see him as he really is. The characters were fleshed out enough to be believable in the context of the tale, and I ended up quite involved in whether Cary would stick with Bertram.

“She was not too young to be wise, but she was too young to know that wisdom shouldn’t be spoken aloud when you are happy.”

There is course the obvious moral – the proverbial gaining the world but then losing your soul; the fact that there are plenty of things that money cannot buy; and that gambling is not a solution. Obviously this is not one of Greene’s major works, rather one of the “entertainments” that he wrote to pay the bills. Nevertheless it still says much in its few pages, the love story is very sweet and the fact that the book managed to make a good few points without being heavy-handed shows what a great writer Greene was. An enjoyable page-turner – recommended!