A THEATRE FOR DREAMERS was idyllic. I felt like I was on a Greek Island: somewhere hot, hazy and dreamy. ☀️ Oooh and the food sounded so delicious! 😋 Polly did a brilliant job of making me feel like I was in Hydra through the beautiful descriptions of the place; quite sensory experience. I’m a sucker for bohemian vibes too so mixing with a group of poets (I spy a young Leonard Cohen 😉) painters and musicians in the 60s was right up my street!! 😂 The story follows Erica, a teenager who arrives on the island and is welcomed by the group, yet never quite feels a part of it. I do enjoy a coming of age story. I did feel it was a tad long, but overall, I enjoyed listening to A THEATRE FOR DREAMERS and it provided much needed escapism. 😎 I’m just longing to travel now! ✈️

I so wanted to adore this book...I love the mixture of fact and fiction and I love Greece...but unfortunately I just didn't love it.

I love flowery prose but this went a bit far ...the contradiction between how Erica thinks and how she acts were so far apart..it was hard to get a grip on her character.   As for Bobby...I hated him from the moment he acted like a 2 year old on the car journey from England and that never recovered.

Its very hard to imagine real people in these situations...and although I wanted to be enthralled by Leonard Cohen and Co....I just wasn't...they still seemed like dreamy obscure figures....

I understand the book overall wanted a dreamy quality and I applaud the author, who is clearly very talented, for this but it was so dreamy that I couldn't engage with it at all and struggled with it.

I do plan to read it again at a later date...maybe on the beach or somewhere dreamy and beautiful and I will see if I enjoy it more then...

Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I listened to the audiobook version of "A Theatre For Dreamers" which brought the added bonus of author Polly Samson's mellifluous tones and husband and Pink Floyd veteran David Gilmour's exquisite guitar playing. Oh, it is glorious! "A Theatre For Dreamers" is a beautiful, transporting summery read. Full disclosure - I had no prior knowledge of Leonard Cohen etc. but I don't feel that diminished the experience.

A languorous, atmospheric read. Maybe not quite as clever as it thinks it is, but engaging nevertheless. Erica has just the right amount of detachment to give the story some depth, and the setting is glorious.

I loved the sense of place and time in this novel - it’s genuinely transporting in that sense. I found the web of relationships between the characters fascinating especially as I knew very little of the story of Leonard Cohen, Marianne and her husband. The writing was a little flowery and heavy on description at times but I could forgive that as the overall result was so successful.

There is no way my review will give this beautiful novel justice, it quite literally, and I can think of no other words, swept me away. It wasn’t just the beautiful Greek Island of Hydra that captivated but also the characters, the naive, young Erica, and the bohemian collection of writers and artists that flocked to the island.

Erica, was our eyes and ears, an interloper, an objective outsider who observed, and navigated her way through the hierarchy and intrigues of the eclectic mix of individuals. But it wasn’t just about what she saw or did, it was also about her own journey through the grief of losing her mother, the tribulations of understanding herself as a person but also as a woman in a changing world. Would she be just like her own mother, and countless women in the world who ‘served’ the men in their life, be the homemaker or would she forge her own, independent path?

Famous writer Charmain Clift was the matriarch of the island, her house, her family through which life revolved. And what a house and family it was, as Samson painted a marriage that was forever marred by volatility. Clift and her husband, fellow author George Johnston, were two creative giants who clashed against each other and those around them, yet you felt they couldn’t exist without each other or the island without them.

Charmaine, became Erica’s substitute mother, as she searched for clues of her mother’s hidden life, little clues that Sansom littered throughout, as she painted a picture of a woman with a life removed from that of her family, well hidden from all.

Along with Erica you desperately wanted to discover her mother’s secrets but Sansom kept us waiting and instead opened up the myriad intrigues of the island. We watched along with Erica as famous Norwegian written Axel Jensen, conducted his love affairs, the despair of his long suffering wife Marianne, and the arrival of poet Leonard Cohen, destined to be famous, yet pulled into the swirling vortex of Hydra’s scandalous affairs.

When the secret finally revealed itself, you weren’t shocked, but somehow knew and I think Erica already knew but just needed to hear it from the one source she trusted. it was her the effect on her subsequent actions, that were interesting, that would you hope change the course of an unhappy life she found herself in.

And what of Hydra, the island that somehow contained them all before spewing them out when they had outstayed their welcome. Again we followed Erica as she absorbed its beauty, the beaches, the sea, the dry and arid landscape, and the simmering heat of the summer. Samson’s imagery was wonderful, you could imagine yourself there, could feel the heat, the coolness of the sea and taste the local food they ate.

It was a heady mix of superb characterisation, magical scene setting and fantastic storytelling. What I loved above everything else was that the characters were real, the story based on fact, and Samson’s ability to bring them, and the island of Hydra so vividly to life.

I really didn’t want to leave, the island or Erica, sad to leave them as I turned the final page.

Thank you so much Polly Sansom for creating such a wonderful and beautiful novel.

'I watch my step. a stumble can so easily become a fall.'
An authentic, sharply drawn portrait of a young woman's summer of self-reckoning, told in retrospect.
The famous and iconic characters dance and blend their through 1960 on the island, a melting pot of political and sexual experimentation, coloured in as rich 
a pallet as the Hydra skies.

This book was great. I loved all the characters, the plot line kept me engaged the whole way through and I loved all the characters. Beautifully written and as a avid reader I felt captured by this book, it felt very original.

BOOK REVIEW: A theatre for dreamers by Polly Samson (2020)

A novel can work or not, for many reasons. The timing. The setting. The characters. The writing. The plot. There are also factors we can’t place: I often have no idea why I like or hate a book.

I read ‘A theatre for dreamers’ this June. The timing was bittersweet. I am Greek, though I left for London years ago. Of course I sometimes question that decision; it’s the fate of those with two homes. I had planned to travel to Greece this August, then Covid 19 came & all routes to Greece closed: it remains achingly unclear when I can go. 

These pages are full of Greece: the port, the summer visitors, the whitewashed houses, the milky white ouzo, the pure white foam of the waves, the lemon trees, the terraces, the lanterns, the honey syrup cakes, the stuffed peppers, the night swimming. The Hydra here feels as familiar to me as my blood & bones; I felt acutely nostalgic reading this.

Samson tells the story of 1960 picturesque, unspoiled Hydra, the glorified time when Leonard Cohen, Marianne Ihlen & an expat community of writers lived & wrote there. It’s written in first person: Erica, an 18 year old drifter, escapes from London after her mother dies, hoping to meet her mother’s friend Charmian Clift. Australian Charmian Clift & her husband George Johnston, both writers, form the anchor of this story, Erica observing them. Erica is the only fictional character in a fictionalised group of famous figures; Samson is wise to give this young outsider the most well-rounded character, while larger-than-life figures such as Cohen remain in the background. I was dreading reading about Cohen in fiction: how can that work? Samson managed to get it (almost) right by keeping him vague enough not to notice.

The book isn’t plot-driven and is slow, though always atmospheric. The idealised, sun filled group of intellectuals turns sour with betrayal, violence, parental neglect & immaturity. I was left with a bad aftertaste: there’s a jarring juxtaposition between the island I feel such a pull towards, trapped in the London of Covid, versus the disappointment of this group of characters. 

Thanks to #negalley for my copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

A gorgeous read that flows like the tide, sparkles like the sea and lingers in the mind like a summer day.
I am desperate to go to Greece and the islands after reading this novel. 
It brings to life all the contemporary moments of the 60s, from art and music to women's liberation.

 
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

"It's a magic trick from barren rock, a theatre for dreamers. The stage is lit by sun and sea... I might leap as the port and its toy town come at us out of the blue. I look from the mountains to the ziggurats of houses and back to the colourful boats in the harbour and for the first time since we left London I'm happy."

In 1960, Erica's mother dies and leaves her a small fortune. Fuelled by grief and escaping her abusive father, she decides to run away to the Greek island of Hydra with her brother and her boyfriend. On the island live the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, friends of her mother, who are the leaders of a bohemian community of musicians, painters and poets that have settled on Hydra. Charmian takes Erica under her wing, becoming a second mother to her, teaching her how to be an adult and telling stories of her late mother.

A Theatre for Dreamers is a portrait of a society on the brink of revolution and the beginning of second wave feminism. Many of the women on the island are 'muses' for their creative husbands, and the novel explores the role of women in facilitating men's artistic work, usually uncredited, in sacrifice of their own creativity and whilst running a household. There are many famous people in this book, including a young Leonard Cohen, and I was worried this would detract from the book but it doesn't - they are mostly background characters to Erica's coming of age story.

This is one of those books where not a lot happens, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - I'm a sucker for storytelling about domestic life and people's friendships and relationships. I loved how this was written, I felt like I was on Hydra myself 🌞🌊⛱️ considering I won't be able to travel for a while, this felt like the closest I can get to a holiday for now. A great piece of escapist literature.

A Theatre for Dreamers is summer in a book, that took me to the heat and beauty of the Greek Island of Hydra. Set in 1960, Erica, her boyfriend Jimmy and brother Bobby set off for the Island of Hydra, for literaty and artistic inspiration and for Erica to find Charmain Clift.  Charmain was friends with Erica’s mother, who recently died, and she wants to find out more about her. Hydra is awash with literary and artistic talent, as well as Charmain, there is her husband George Johnston, Axel Jensen and a young Leonard Cohen. Over the course of the summer relationships are tested, a love triangle emerges and on the side lines Erica watches with intrigue as her ideals are shattered.

A Theatre for Dreamers is beautiful in repsect of Polly Samson’s writing, setting and plot. Erica is only seventeen when she looses her mother and goes to Hydra in search of author Charmain Clift. She has left a sheltered life, caring for her mother until her death and being ruled by a strict and cold father. Her mother left her money so she could follow her dreams, and make something of her life, and Hydra offers that to her. Hydra is everything her life in London is not; colourful, bright, and even though there is no running water or electricity she embraces her new found freedom. At seventeen Erica is young, naive and idealistic, seeing only the best in everyone and everything, but over the course of the summer the rose tinted glasses cloud over, and her ideals are shattered.

It is Charman who takes on the mother role with Erica, teaching her how to cook, and giving her advice, especially about not putting her life on hold for a man. This is a bit ironic as Charmain has stopped writing so she can help her tempremantal husband George write his first novel. Charmain is like the queen of the islands artisitc community.  She holds court every morning at the cafe where the writers gather, including Leonard Cohen, and at the bars and parties in the evening.  It as a cosmopolitan community, that reminded me of the literary salons in Paris in the seventeenth century, with the writers giving readings, discussing literary greats and philosophising about their writing.

Polly Samson writes in vivid technicolour, capturing the light, the colours, sights, sounds and smells of the Island, its rituals and beauty. The same intensity and detail are in her writing of the characters as well; the angry and passionate Axel Jensen, his beautiful and demur wife Marianne, the tortured George Johnston, and the relaxed and laid back Leonard Cohen. All the nuances and emotions of these characters made me feel like I knew and understood them. Feminism and the female as a Muse were a thread that run throughout the story. Charmain feels she has had to put her writng on hold to be a wife, mother and help her husband write his book.  Marianne is husband Axel’s muse, and devotes her life to making it easy for hime to write, cooking for him, taking food to him, caring for him whilst he is continually having affairs. Charmain wants more than this for Erica, advising her of living her own life and not running around after her boyfriend which is what she is doing in her relationship with Jimmy; up at the crack of dawn to get food and water, making it easy for him to write. The 1960’s was the decade that first saw women be given more opportunities, and being liberated for the social and cultural constraints of previous decades, so it was fascinating to read of a world on the cusp of this revolution.

A Theatre for Dreamers is an enchanting and evocative read, that took me to the beautiful Island of Hydra. It is an ode to a more simplistic life, a life of art and literature, a place of debate and philosphical discussion, a cosmopolitan community. Polly Samson captures the continually changing atmosphere of the Island, the passion of those who live there and the sense of community. This is a glorious read,  sensual in the writing and immersive in the storyline, the perfect summer read.

Halcyon skies, bright blue seas, beautiful beaches, tumbling trees…in Polly Samson’s A Theatre for Dreamers Hydra is painted as a stunning place where anything can happen. Including dreams. Focusing on an artistic community on a Greek island in the 60s, this novel explores art and sexuality through relationships that form and flex throughout it. Prominent among the artists and poets are a Norwegian couple – Axel Jensen and Marianne Ihlen – and a young, charismatic Canadian by the name of Leonard Cohen, who hooks up with young muse Marianne. Sexual jealousy builds. Violence and anger abound. It’s tense at times. 
Atmospheric prose and vivid descriptions captivate throughout, even though at times the characters and plot gets a bit saggy. But the language and writing hooks you in and makes you imagine the blue skies and bluer seas that we all want to be near. It is a classic coming-of-age story, beautifully executed.
It’s perfect summer reading, transporting us far away whilst we’re all trying to remember what holidays look like.

This was fine. Some of the descriptions of the island were lovely but overall I just felt distanced from all of the action. Nothing much seemed to happen. The opening section did away with a lot of the tension with some storylines that were to come later. 

I found myself almost fighting the novel the whole way. I think I would have liked this more had our main character been a bit more self-aware in looking back on her past. A slightly different space for the narrative point of view. She seemed a bit too naive. 

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Books can transport you in time and space.  A Theatre of Dreamers took me to a Greek island in the early 60s.  I spent time mixing with the artistic community including Leonard Cohen who had made their home there.  Most of all I learnt that it is better to be your own woman and weave your own dreams rather than being the put upon muse of a great man.  Real characters are mixed in with fictional ones and the whole books makes you long to sail in the blue blue seas of Greece.  Perfect for lockdown and perfect for summer.

I found this book a strange reading experience in some respects. The beginning of the story, the travel section, and descriptions of Hydra were so evocative I could see myself there. However the narrative was disjointed, the characters failed to hold my attention, and the language was flowery and unrealistic. 
I found myself skimming through pages to speed up the plot, but there didn’t really seem to be one. 
The book didn’t summon up any sense of the period it was depicting. It all fell flat for me, I’m sorry to say. I had hoped for an escapist read during a time of enforced quarantine, which perhaps unfairly coloured my view of the book. 
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my advance copy of this title.

In 1960, or soon after, Erica sets foot on the Greek island of Hydra. She’d been left some money by her mother and had decided to escape London and her grim father, dragging her boyfriend and brother along with her. Charmian, a friend of her mother’s, a writer who’d lived in the same building, had sent a package containing her latest book – the package being addressed to her late mother – it was a story set on the island and it proved to be the stimulus for an adventure, and perhaps a fresh start. Erica was still in her late teens and an aspiring writer herself and her boyfriend, Jimmy, wrote too and was also a gifted painter. Surely a Greek idyl would be the perfect place for them to take in some sun and let the surrounding beauty inspire their artful ambitions.

After a tortuous trip across Europe they arrived on the island with a few other young people they’d gathered along the way. Erica had signalled her travel plans before setting off and upon arrival they were greeted by George, Charmian’s husband. It wasn’t long before they all found themselves settled into some very basic accommodation on the island. It quickly became apparent that Hydra was full of artists from many countries who had temporarily settled there to enjoy the bohemian lifestyle and work on their projects. Charmian herself turned out to be a larger than life figure who became, in a sense, the mother figure to the group. She had three young children and spent much of her time cajoling the ailing George (yet another writer) to finish a book he’d been contracted to write. Yet, she also found time for Erica in particular and they quickly became close friends.

As Spring turned into Summer the number of characters we’re introduced to seemed to grow exponentially. The handsome Leonard, an aspiring poet, arrives and he quickly becomes the love interest for Marianne, a Norwegian beauty who has recently born a son and has been deserted by her husband Axel, an habitual woman chaser. In fact, in time the cast becomes so bloated that I began to lose track of some of the minor figures. And the lack of a cohesive plot started to bother me too. It was fun hearing about the daily routines of largely beautiful people eating, drinking, writing, painting, taking drugs and swimming in a stunning setting, but where was all this going? I began to wonder whether this was a literary novel, as I’d been led to believe, or whether it had in fact strayed dangerously close to chic lit territory.

But as Summer drew to a close the party started to wind-up too. People began making plans to leave the island and Erica now faced a dilemma of her own: what should she do, the money she’d been left wouldn’t last forever and yet she dreaded the thought of going back to London. And it was now, with the tale nearly told that the surname of one of the key characters was casually dropped into the narrative. Hang on a minute, I thought - I know that name and isn’t that associated piece of work that was mentioned something I vaguely recognise too? A quick internet search provided confirmation and a little more digging unearthed the fact that other characters here were people with a real history too. I was shocked, I’d been coasting through this book totally unaware that it was a construction consisting of the author’s interpretation of a key phase in the life of a number of widely respected figures. 

That discovery changed everything for me and I spent some time digging up more and more detail on the real life people featured here. To my dismay, not only did I find accounts of this group during the period covered in this book but also high quality photographs of them on the island at that time (see below for more on this should you want it). I was blown away and returned to finish the book with fresh eyes. The story had skipped a decade by now and the added poignancy of my new knowledge meant that the closing pages hit me much harder than I’d have thought possible. Suddenly I was reading about what became of (some) people who had lived through real events on the island. And what tragedies there were to behold. 

So how do I rate this book? I think because of my concerns around the mid part of the book I’m going to have to go for 4 stars, but I do know for certain that this book is one that will stay with me for some time. If I’d picked it up with foreknowledge of what I discovered late on I might have had a very different experience with it, and yet I think it likely that this was a deliberately ploy to catch out unsuspecting readers like me. What a great trick, I loved it. 

Link giving some background here:

https://medium.com/@chrisjones_32882/...

Known cast:

Leonard Cohen – Canadian singer, songwriter, poet and novelist
Axel Jensen – Norwegian author and husband of Marianne Ihlen
Marianne Ihlen - Cohen’s muse
George Henry Johnston – Australian journalist, war correspondent and novelist
Charmian Clift – Australian writer and essayist

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.

What a perfect book to read during the lockdown-I felt as if I had been taken to the magical island of Hydra,which in the early 60s was home to a group,of writers and artists ,including Leonard Cohen and his muse Marianne Ihlen.The writing is superb,and the author depicts all the beauty of the island through its beaches,olive groves,flowers,tastes and smells in the most beautifully written prose.
The story is told by a young woman,Erica, who goes to the island when she is left money by her mother in order to escape from her domineering father. Through her acquaintance with Charmian Clift,,an Australian writer,she is accepted into the group of artists and their story is told through her eyes.
They are quite an unlikeable group,particularly the men,who use the women to see to all their domestic and sexual needs without acknowledging  any of their talents .Women's liberation came later in the 60s,and it's easy to see why it was needed!
I saw the documentary 'Leonard and Marianne' about the same subject,so I had some knowledge of the subject but this book gave so much more of an insight into their story,and I loved it.Highly recommended.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in return for an honest review.

I so enjoyed this wonderful, absorbing book which helped distract me from everything that is currently happening in the world.

Firstly I loved the wonderful descriptions of Hydra, the Greek island that Erica and her brother find themselves. The island seemed like such a beautiful, almost magical place where real life is almost suspended whilst you are there The descriptions were so vivid that I could really picture everything in my head and just drank in the beauty of it. The author includes some of the little details of life there like how they get their food from the market and the food they eat which helped make the story seem very realistic.

There are some fantastic, colourful and varied characters in this book which combine to make a truly fascinating story. I loved the main character Erica and enjoyed living precariously through her as she lives on the island. She seems quite naive at the beginning and I felt like shouting at her a few times to just get a grip. This is however also some of her charm too and I enjoyed following her as she grows up. Charmian is another fantastic character who seems like someone I’d love to know in real life. She seems very warm and willing to listen, most of the time which makes her easy to like. She seems almost stuck in the middle of two world however, the war time where women were expected to just do as they were told and the new world where they are much more free. It was interesting for me to see the struggle and variation between these, though exciting to see the changes come into play.

I felt this read a bit like a coming of age story and I loved following Erica and her friends. Even though we know from the beginning that things didn’t perhaps end like she planned I still liked reading the story and watching everything unfold. The mystery involving Erica’s mother was an interesting one to follow. I did guess fairly early on what it was but I think the author meant it to be like that and I suspect that Erica herself maybe had an inkling about what it might be.

Huge thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour and to Bloomsbury for my copy of this book via Netgalley. If you want an absorbing, escapist book then I thoroughly recommend this one.