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A Theatre for Dreamers

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A Theatre for Dreamers

By: Polly Samson
Narrated by: Polly Samson
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Summary

The Sunday Times best seller and an Observer Fiction Highlight 2020

Featuring bonus track and original music from Pink Floyd's David Gilmour.

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.

© 2020 Polly Samson All music by David Gilmour 'Yes, I Have Ghosts' Lyrics by Polly Samson. Performed by David Gilmour with Romany Gilmour. The moral right of the author has been asserted (p) 

2020 Polly Samson under license to W.F. Howes Ltd All music (p) 2020 David Gilmour Music Ltd. All songs Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd 

©2020 Polly Samson (P)2020 Polly Samson under license to W.F. Howes. All music (P) David Gilmour Music Ltd. All songs Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd Ltd. All music to David Gilmour Music Ltd Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Music Women's Fiction Greece Royalty
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Critic reviews

"Delicious." (Nigella Lawson)

"A glorious novel." (Kate Mosse)

"If summer was suddenly like a novel, it would be like this one." (Andrew O'Hagan)
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I was totally absorbed by this book. it's true nothing much happens but I loved the writing and entering their world for a bit.
It's a real shame they didn't get an actor to read it. The narrator's voices are poor and quite annoying.

immersive escapism

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I am a huge Leonard Cohen fan and so was interested in this story combining fiction and non-fiction.
It began too slowly but loved all the detailed descriptions of Hydra. I got a real sense of what it must have been like in the 1960s.
I loved the music in between the chapters reminding me of Cohen's work.
Once completed, I enjoyed googling the real life characters and seeing what became of them. My only real feedback is generally authors should leave the narration to the real professionals (apart from Maya Angelou!)

Made me want to visit Hydra some day

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The book really conjures up the atmosphere of the island, and the time. I already knew quite a bit about the real life characters, but found them unengaging and the story line lacking.

very atmospheric

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This book took me back to Hydra. Astoundingly descriptive, it gave me the holiday that, like may of us, I could not take this year.
I could feel the heat of the sun, taste the retsina, hear the cicadas, smell the donkey shit. The list would be a long one.
Equally generous is the insight into the characters; some fictional, others not. Not so much a story with twists, turns and a strong plot, it is rather a biopic journey over time of the lives, loves and struggles of the characters; the 'dreamers' starting in 1960.
Getting drawn into gossip about their tangled lives would make this an excellent book club choice to chew over.
The ending and wrapping- up was was a strong point about this story. I now miss the characters.
I am keen to reading Samon's previous novel now.

Astoundingly descriptive

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Natasha Pulley manages to write finely drawn characters set against huge landscapers of time and place.

Loved it.

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