A Theatre for Dreamers

POLLY SAMSON 

A THEATRE FOR DREAMERS 

Hardback: £14.99 Ebook: £12.58 

Publication date: 2 April 2020 

1960. The world is dancing on the edge of revolution, and nowhere more so than on the Greek island of Hydra, where a circle of poets, painters and musicians live tangled lives, ruled by the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled king and queen of bohemia. Forming within this circle is a triangle: its points the magnetic, destructive writer Axel Jensen, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen. 

Into their midst arrives teenage Erica, with little more than a bundle of blank notebooks and her grief for her mother. Settling on the periphery of this circle, she watches, entranced and disquieted, as a paradise unravels. 

Burning with the heat and light of Greece, A Theatre for Dreamers is a spellbinding novel about utopian dreams and innocence lost – and the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius. 

About the author

Polly Samson is the author of two short story collections and two previous novels. Her work has been shortlisted for prizes, translated into several languages and has been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. She has written lyrics to four number one albums and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 

pollysamson.com @PollySamson 

Polly Samson is available for interviews and events. 

For more information please contact Ros Ellis in the Bloomsbury press office at ros.ellis@bloomsbury.com 

My Review

This book is a bit of a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, the sense of place is superbly done so that the reader feels transported back to the summer of 1960; a Greece before mass tourism where artists founded their own community on the island of Hydra. Summer simply seeps from the pages, so tangible you want to touch it, breathe in the scents, listen to the music. It felt like opening a magic box to a bygone time.

On the other hand, whilst I enjoyed being part of Erica's voyage of discovery, where Leonard Cohen and Charmian Cliff are minor characters supporting her story, there were times when I felt the book lost its way and I was torn - part of me wanted to fast forward the story, the other part wanted to wallow in the descriptions of the island and its dysfunctional inhabitants.

If you are a fan of Leonard Cohen, the 1960s or Greece, you will love this book. I don't think it is for everyone but that makes it all the more special.