- For Richer, For Poorer
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Miserable at an elegant day school for girls, Victoria Coren found an escape in the mysterious world of poker. Twenty years later, she’d won a million dollars and forgotten to have children. What price adventure? This is a true story of happiness and heartbreak, smoke and mirrors, bright lights and shady characters. It might also tell you how to win a million dollars…
This long-awaited memoir of poker, love and life, a critical smash on publication, is now out in paperback.
“Oh my. Just finished Victoria Coren’s book For Richer For Poorer. It made me wince, cheer and cry my eyes out. Utterly wonderful.” - Emma Kennedy
“A book so rich in detail, so full of laughter, that you feel as if the coolest member of your family has just let you in on a secret so delicious you will savour it for ever.” - THE TIMES
(Times review in full)
“A terrific memoir… engaging, lucid, full of verve and a pleasure to read. This book is also really funny. These pages are crowded with fascinating people. There is also an unexpected resonance and depth. What more can you ask from a read?” - THE OBSERVER
(Observer review in full)
“Funny and enthralling saga.” - THE INDEPENDENT
(Independent review in full)
“Honest, funny, highly personal and nostalgic memoir about friendship and belonging” - FINANCIAL TIMES
(Financial Times review in full)
“Fresh, funny and moving. Coren writes insightfully about love, obsession, depression and illness - and poker, obviously, and how it helped her cope with life. This is a wonderful book, worthy of comparison with the best.” - LITERARY REVIEW
(Literary Review in full).
“Coren tells the story of her unorthodox rise to poker fame with wit, panache and considerable candour… It makes for a nail-biting read.” - MAIL ON SUNDAY
“If you’re interested in poker, you will love this book. If you’re not interested in poker, you will adore it anyway.” - Sam Leith, THE SPECTATOR
“An absorbing and unusual slice of autobiography. [Coren’s] journey from refined, middle-class North London to brassy Las Vegas is an unlikely one, as she is the first to admit. By chronicling it with a beguiling blend of humour and honesty, shrewdness and candour, she wins the reader’s heart.” - Anthony Holden, DAILY TELEGRAPH
Daily Telegraph review in full.
“This book is of another order altogether. It is superb.” - THE GUARDIAN
Guardian review in full.
“This is a really funny and moving memoir… packed with colourful eccentrics and hilarious anecdotes but doesn’t hide from the dark side of the game. This is the nuts.” - SUNDAY TRIBUNE
Sunday Tribune review in full.
“Vivid… Unflinchingly honest… A compulsive read which may well leave you reaching for a pack of cards.” - ELLE
Elle review in full.
“Sparkling… A compelling, multi-layered reflection… For Richer, For Poorer may be the best-written poker book since Alvarez’s classic The Biggest Game In Town, and that’s saying a lot.” - THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Globe & Mail review in full.
“For Richer, For Poorer seizes the reader with its first sentence and never lets go. Victoria Coren writes, on several levels, with wit, honesty, and perfect freshness.” - MARTIN AMIS
“This miseducation of a poker player is terrifically funny and terribly moving. Victoria Coren plays cards like a demon and writes like an angel.” - PATRICK MARBER
“Coren is vulnerable and yet self-aware and the result is a brilliant blend: a touching personal memoir and a glimpse into the fascinating, colourful, deeply flawed world she loves so much.” - DAVE GORMAN
“Victoria Coren is Britain’s most successful woman poker player and her story, unlike most poker stories, has a happy ending. It is also funny, shrewd and - for a poker player - astonishingly modest and frank. A class act.” - AL ALVAREZ
“This funny, moving and fascinating account of how a posh lass fell in love with the disreputable game is full of hilarious characters, amusing set pieces and insight” BIG ISSUE
“Coren is a strangely winning combination of lone cowgirl, femme fatale and soft-centred feminist.” - WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN
“More than just an autobiography, For Richer For Poorer is a polished, perceptive document of an important period in poker’s history. Coren’s memoir provides both a compelling narrative of the author’s own adventures and a smart, insightful commentary on the game’s evolution. Quite literary - even lyrical at times - full of allusion, word play and wit; there are dozens of genuinely laugh-out-loud anecdotes and one-liners, each delivered with expert timing. It is a wonderfully written, even poetic book that deserves a place alongside the influential poker writing of the last few decades.” - POKER PLAYER MAGAZINE
“This is the true story of how a nice London girl who should know better gets swept up in smoky drawn rooms against the backdrop of the UK poker explosion. She is here neither from a wrong turn nor a misspent youth. Vicky simply loves it, every rogue, scallywag, and fettered turn of poker phrase. She glories in them, takes her place alongside, and with a pitch-perfect ear and an inner voice that has you mesmerized with her steely nerve, Vicky makes us all live for the next card and thrill for long hours spent in idle turns. Always true to her tale, Victoria Coren is the one person who can tell the story of how a motley crew of British chancers became household names at the mercy of the game they love. It’s faithful, epic, funny, poignant, all too honest, and true to every loveable miscreant she’s faced across the green baize. I read this book in one righteous gulp and I will pick it up again and again.” - JESSE MAY
“Thrilling, tender and fantastically romantic. Winning at poker is the next best thing to being a rock star.” - LOUISE WENER
