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.

In Polly Samson’s new novel, A Theatre for Dreamers, we’re transported to the Greek island of Hydra in 1960 with Erica, a 17-year-old girl who’s recently lost her mother and used her unexpected inheritance to escape from her bullying father and ‘have an adventure’, along with her brother, Bobby, and boyfriend, Jimmy. Their former neighbours Charmian and George live on the island, along with an assortment of ragtag writers, artists and musicians living the bohemian life.

As other reviewers have pointed out, this novel’s publication date has turned out to be particularly fortuitous, as readers are in lockdown and looking for fiction that transports them to exotic places! Samson definitely delivers the goods with long, lush, languorous descriptions of life in an idyllic location with lots of lovely food and drink.

It’s not completely relaxing, though, as there’s a constant sense that things are about to descend into nastiness between the characters. A big theme of the book is that people are who they are, no matter their location. George and Charmian, both writers, have a terrible relationship and are constantly sniping at one another, while the other characters’ drinking, drug-taking, bed-hopping and (in some cases) general awfulness inevitably leads to arguments, violence and unwanted pregnancies.

Another big theme is how artistic men treated their wives and girlfriends at this time. Through Erica’s eyes, we witness how Marianne Ihlen, although ostensibly a ‘muse’, is treated abysmally by philandering author Axel Jensen, and then as a helpmeet by Leonard Cohen. Charmian, who rapidly becomes a replacement mother figure for Erica, regularly reinforces the message that women should be free to pursue their own endeavours, while acknowledging that she’s propping up George’s career at the expense of her own by helping him write his books and doing all the cooking, cleaning and childcare.

Erica herself ends up very much in service to her boyfriend, brother, and the other young artists and writers they live with, often reasoning that they’re painting all day, or had a late night, whereas all she does is write in her notebook now and again. I felt really quite sad for her, and that she wasn’t really ‘following her dreams’ or ‘having an adventure’ so much as playing house somewhere nice.

Erica really isn’t part of the social group - she reports what happens on the island with the detachment of an outsider, her brother is horrible to her, and her boyfriend is the kind who just wants to show off to his friends all the time, and only pays her much attention when they’re alone together. Nonetheless, her period on Hydra is clearly a formative experience in her life: she develops as a person by reading Sartre and de Beauvoir and observing others, she eventually does become a writer, and she has enough affection for the island to return there when she’s older and ask what became of the people who lived there.

I went into this book with no knowledge that it was based on real events (it was a long time before I was born…). I did catch on that Leonard was Leonard Cohen pretty quickly, but it was only quite a way in, when Charmian talks about Elizabeth Jane Howard as a friend who also has connections with the island, that I really made the effort to find out which characters were based on real people. I think that’s a very good thing - it means you can enjoy this book whether you know the background or not, and shouldn’t be put off if you’re not massively familiar with anyone in it.

A Theatre for Dreamers is a highly transportive novel that makes important points about human nature and women’s subjugation and exposes the dark side of the bohemian dream.

Polly Samson’s A Theatre for Dreamers is a love song to a bygone age; a testament to youth, to creativity, to boundless energy. It zings with colours, scents, melodies; brings to life the island of Hydra and the spirit of those who were drawn to it, in all of their complicated, vivid glory. Reading its pages, its audience will see the blue of the limitless, surrounding ocean; will crave the scent of the spitting, cooking food and walks upon its rolling green hills.
Standing in 2020, the 60s seems like a different world but, the setting of A Theatre for Dreamers inhabits the very fringes of its swinging contemporary society. The island of Hydra markets itself as standing free from the rules and the restraints of dreary London town; poses as a safe haven to the most restless of bohemian souls.
But, is it just a mirage? Is the theatre just that: a place for people playing a part while the same old rules rest below the surface?
Because, if you dig a little deeper (as Samson is so eager to do), the same structures of inequality have wheedled their way into the island’s daily life. No matter how equal the relationships are supposed to be, women do the lion’s share of the work; relieving their male partners of domestic duties and allowing their dreams and their creativity to thrive.
But, what about the dreams and creativity of their own?
Their subservience to their so-called equals and the way, as explored in protagonist Erica, that the power-balances shift ever-so-slowly as not to be recognised until servitude has been reached and their own artistic ambitions tossed aside, is a central theme of Samson’s startlingly vivid novel. It shows the fruitless search for a room of their own, even on the vastness of a tranquil island paradise, and how, even those who are supposedly the most free from convention, are in fact the most bound to it.
So be careful what you wish for, because even that may not be as it seems.

“ Spice-coloured rocks, scrub, brush, acid yellow, herb. Pitched orange roofs and salt-white houses that rise to the gods, all eyes to the port.“

This is an absolutely enchanting book that made me hungry for Mediterranean food, wine and life. Every page swims with details of the island of Hydra and its transient, artistic inhabitants of the 1960s.

The hedonistic characters are beautifully detailed. I didn’t know the story behind any of these artists before embarking on the book and they could just as easily have been fictional characters, as the author has filled in any necessary details so I didn’t feel at all that I was missing anything without that prior knowledge. Yes, people know Leonard Cohen’s name but this is not his story. This is our protagonist Erica’s coming-of-age tale, at once brimming with sensuality and devastating reality.

Literary fiction like this that allows you to escape into the not-so-perfect past lives of others is a real panacea for our current state of affairs and I’m so grateful to Bloomsbury for having granted me
an ARC of this gorgeous book that is utterly transporting and idyllic; even when not all is as it seems. For fans of The Strays and The Age of Light.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Publishing and Polly Samson for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the beginning before they left to travel. But it didn't capture my attention after they had settled in Greece. Couldn't get past 25% unfortunately. Thanks for the chance to read and feedback.

First off, I think this book probably fared badly considering my headspace and the state the world is in at the moment. My first quarantine-read was never going to be brilliant. Additionally, I’m not very familiar with this period of history, and the real-life characters that populate the book. Added to that I was reading it on a Kindle - meaning I couldn’t flick back to check where they had first appeared - and the lack of backstory that each character suffered from, this fell rather flat for me. I didn’t engage with any of the characters, and found myself skipping over parts where I couldn’t identify what was happening, or to whom. This resulted in a disappointing reading experience, where the setting occasionally shone through, but the plot fell apart/never really began. I may revisit this in a few years, with a physical copy, and update my views then.

I'm writing this review in March 2020, locked down in London and I cannot tell you how much I needed this beautiful book to transport me back to 1960s Greece! Lyrical, sexy, tender and sad in places. Highly recommended. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DNF 30%

It seems that I am having quite the DNF streak in 2020. Maybe I'm a picky reader or maybe I just have standards little patience for eye-roll worthy proses that care more about creating a certain aesthetic than actually offering well-rounded characters and or an absorbing storyline.

“We were heady with ideals, drunk with hopes of our languorous lope into a future that had learnt from its past.”


And I'm supposed to believe that our protagonist uses this sort of language? When in all other respects she comes across as being an impressionable 9 year old ?
There are quite a few purply metaphors that once again seem to be there only to create a certain vibe: “her arms are slim as flutes” and “now she's pink all over like strawberry ice cream, a moaning calamine ghost” and “our bodies molten as the sea and sky turned to honey” and “[she] is ahead of me, the silence dark between us. She's always ahead of me, I'm always in pursuit. I know she's keeping secrets from me, I see them jumping behind her eyes whenever I get close.”

There are also lots of snappish phrases: “I race Edie and Janey down the steps, clutching our straw hats to our heads, beach bags bouncing at our hips” and “I imagine them asleep like this, brain to brain, heart to heart, two souls moulded as one in warm clay.”

Cliched phrases aside, the characters struck me as mere names rather than actual people. Our narrator is a bland goody two shoes, while her friends, boyfriend, and brother are more or less interchangeable. The artists, poets, and writes based in Hydra are rather poorly rendered portrayals. Dynamics between characters are also depicted in an uncertain way so that we don't see the development of certain relationships (two characters meet and then they seem to have formed a complex bond).
As a fan of Leonard Cohen I'm finding this book to be a not so grate take on this period of his life.
This type of story has been written many times...and, dare I say, better?

Beautiful description of time and place – Hydra, early 60’s, but lacks narrative drive

Polly Samson writes beautifully about the ambience of a hypnotic Greek island, Hydra, which in the early 1960’s became a magnet firstly for various already published writers, and for painters, other artists and some of the wealthier oddballs of the jet set, but then quickly drew a host of pre-hippy artists in hope of writing the blazing book, or painting the masterpiece.

Centre to this book, which follows the fortunes of an imaginary young woman, Erica, running away with her first love, one of those would be blazing writers, are a couple of real Australian journalists and writers, heavy drinking, somewhat louche, magnetic, and with a stormy marriage, George Johnston and Charmian Clift. But probably more of a lure to prospective readers – certainly this one, is another famed pair, who were part of a somewhat younger set of artists or would be artists , Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen, or as she was then, Marianne Jensen, married to the Norwegian writer Axel Jensen

This was a deeply hedonistic community, sex, alcohol, and drugs, if not quite rock and roll

Samson explores this well, also the tension between the artistic life of the men, or the would be artistic life, and women who were themselves artists (Clift) but whose own art got subsumed into serving the creative talent of their menfolk. Some seemed to willingly adopt the role of muse (Marianne) some were torn by their own knowledge that they too were artists of value and importance, but that conditioning and society itself assumed that the female role should serve the artistry of her man, rather than her own creativity.

The challenge, however in Samson’s book is that it feels far longer than it is (300 + pages). She does write wonderfully about Hydra, the reader really is transported, but there is too much of this, too much of a repetition of the drinking, the endless lustings and consummations or rejections, and what is lacking, actually, is narrative tension. And so, curiously it was difficult to engage or really care. It is certainly a ‘more than okay’ book, but could have done with pruning back to keep the momentum of story alive

In "A Room of One's Own" Virginia Woolf writes powerfully of the way women have been deprived of the conditions, material and emotional support, under which artistic work can prosper.

The subservience to men, thus hindering their own creative output, is one of several themes contained in Polly Samson's fictional work based on real characters and events. Another is the tragic outcome, that will befall many of the children of those consumed by the hedonistic and bohemian lifestyle, to quote from the book "children paid the price of their freedom".

The story's main character is the 17 year old, fictional Erica Hart, who escapes from her violent father to join the "foreign colony" on the Greek island of Hydras.

It is 1960 and the community she joins is made of writers, poets and artists, creating or waiting for inspiration.
Hydras can thus be compared to Paris of the 1920s; the home of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. This artistic society is headed by the married Australien writers George Johnston and Charmain Clift, a truly dysfunctioning couple.

Also it is here that Leonard Cohen will meet Marianne, famous later for the letter that he wrote, when she lay on her deathbed and subject of the song "Bird on the Wire".

In the book, Erica will in later life look back and re-examine her summer spent on the island and the consequences of what such a lifestyle and belief system will result in.

Can artistic creation be conducted only outside conventional norms and behaviour?

It is well worth reading this in order to find out the fate of many of those involved.
A rather haunting tale that will, I'm sure, stay in many reader's minds for some time to come.

This is a captivating book that i think so many people will love. The characters are intense and so fully fleshed and engrossing.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Samson really captured a place and time in this book. Interestingly, it comes out not too long after a documentary which also discusses the lives of Leonard and Marianne on Hydra, so there is obviously interest in this story after his death. However, I liked how the story was not centred around them but around a normal girl who was just seeking to escape her everyday life. I thought the discussions of female independence and what it means to support a man in his 'important work' were necessary and done well. And she definitely succeeded in making me want to get on the next plane to Hydra!

I actually don't know what to say about this book.
There were times I got swept away in it and could feel the sun,the breeze,taste the alcohol... I felt I could have been there.
There were times I felt like it was a soap opera with a bit more sunshine than we get in our normal ones.
There were times I skipped a page because it just didn't hold my attention.

The positives were more frequent than the negatives.

I think that's probably all I've got to say about this book.

This novel about Hydra in the sixties paints a picture of bohemian life lived out in the sunshine against the beautiful backdrop of a greek island....is this the stuff dreams are made of? Polly has researched this era well and when life should be perfect and fairytale-like she shows how human nature doesn’t change, all the same insecurities, loves and hates.

I was intrigued to read about Leonard Cohen and Marianne and this didn’t disappoint as although they featured heavily within the storyline, their lives weren’t central. It was written for me, a young woman from a bohemian family of this era, as if I could have been Erica within this circle of artists, reliving a life that could have been mine.

The writing is poetic and atmospheric and I really should have enjoyed it all, but didn’t quite as much as I had hoped and and kept skipping bits in the middle. However towards the final third I became immersed in her world. Thank you Netgalley for ARC for an unbiased review.

Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Mesmerising, compelling, evocative and utterly stunning - one of the most profound novels of our age. Finishing 'A Theatre for Dreamers' was like waking from the most beautiful dream. Shaking myself from the trance-like state, however, means distilling this wonderful work of literary fiction into what I fear are inadequate, ham-fisted words. Polly Samson's lyrical, luminous prose, almost seems to defy the prosaic format of a book review. Every word seems to stem from an organic, stream of consciousness, which we readers are privileged to share with this gifted author. With barely an indentation on the page, seemingly we float along, almost imperceptibly, to the shores of 1960s Hydra, and the inimitable bohemian personalities we meet under a blazing hot, Greek sun. This is a novel about the tangled interplay of human relations. Idealistic utopias of the innocent transformed into something darker and more destructive. Reality melds with fiction in the vein of a Nicola Upson novel. We meet Charmian Clift and George Johnston; Axel Jensen, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen. Our metacharacter, for the stories that unfold, is teenager Erica. Subsumed, yet separate from the lives and loves of the inhabitants of Hydra. Gender is quite often their battleground. We are at the shores of Second-wave feminism, but this jars incongruently with the men of the liberal elite of this cloistered community. Women are vacuums, mere empty vessels to be filled with the desires and expectations of men. This is the story of women and men; gender relations idealised in theory and confounded in practice, with very real, tragic consequences for the bohemian elite of Hydra.

Simply stunning, beautiful and haunting - a must-read for 2020

This book conjures up long hot summers, affairs of the heart, young love and the collision of cynics and innocents. The descriptions of the island of Hydra conjure up a place of beauty and also menace- too many beautiful and entitled people kettled in one small place. Everyone is trying to pretend and parade their artistic credentials but few succeed. And then you add a famous crooner and a vulnerable young mother in to the mix. .... By now most of us know the story of Leonard Cohen and his muse Marianne. Polly Samson retells this story through the eyes of a young ingenue onlooker and her innocence and desire to see the best in everyone and everything exposes the dark underbelly of island life and celebrity.