#BlogTour: A Theatre For Dreamers by Polly Samson @PollySamson @BloomsburyBooks @annecater #ATheatreForDreamers #PollySamson #RandomThingsTours

Book Synopsis:

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.

A Theatre For Dreamers is available in ebook and hardback now. You can purchase your copy using the link below.

My 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.

About The Author:

I am the author of two collections of short stories Perfect Lives and Lying in Bed and two novels Out of the Picture and The Kindness. I have also written the introduction to Daphne du Maurier’s The Doll and other stories. I was born in London in 1962 but by the age of eight it was clear I’d be a happier child if we lived in the countryside. Luckily my parents shared this view and we moved to the middle of nowhere. Since then I have worked in publishing and as a journalist and I have written lyrics (for Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell, The Endless River and David Gilmour’s On An Island). Apart from obvious things like meeting my husband and the births of my children the highlights of my life so far have been winning a Blue Peter badge, playing the piano on the Jools Holland TV show and hearing my stories being read on the BBC. I am currently working on lyrics for a new David Gilmour solo project.