A Theater for Dreamers by Polly Samson

There are no bigger secrets than our parent's lives, unless it is the secrets kept between lovers.

When Erica's mother dies she discovers she didn't know her mother at all. She had only seen the woman who stayed with an abusive husband and father. How did she secretly stash money away for her daughter's future, and where did that secret car come from, and how was it used?

Erica is nineteen and in love with the older, beautiful, wannabe writer Jimmy. When Erica's previous neighbor, her mother's friend Charmain, sends her newest book and invitation to visit her on the Greek island of Hydra, Erica uses her inheritance to take her and Jimmy to Greece.

Hydra is paradise on earth, nestled between the cliffs and the sea, with marble streets and exotic foods and floral odors competing with the smell of sponges piled on the fishing boats.

Charmain and her husband Gordon are the center of a group of ex-pat young people, artists and writers and poets and their muses. Erica finds a surrogate mother in her, and Charmain tries to guide the teenager to prepare for a fuller life, warning her of the pitfalls of love and men and being bound to a supporting role.

In the early 1960s, these Bohemians are seeking meaning in a world threatened by Atomic destruction, rejecting the conformity of the 1950s. And yet, the men still hold to old fashioned ideas about women and love and sex, and the women comply to keep their men. Charmain imagines another way of living, not merely being a man's muse and caretaker to protect his creative process. 

A natural observer, Erica tries to puzzle out the twisted relationships around her, noting the tension in the marriages of Axle and Marianne Jensen and Charmain and Gordon. When Leonard Cohen arrives on the island, already published at age 25, he is ready to claim Marianne when her husband abandons her and their son for another woman. She is the perfect muse and compliant help-meet for a creative man.

As relationships topple, and alcohol and drugs fuel craziness, Erica is forced to alter her idea of her future.

Hydra is central to the novel, with lush descriptions vividly rendering its beauty and challenges. The Greek traditions are observed, the seasonal changes described. I dreamed of it at night, especially after viewing photographs online of the historical denizens of Hydra during this time. Samson's descriptions of these people, their clothing, is so detailed, arising from these photographs.

I also dreamed of Cohen's music, So Long, Marianne, That's No Way to Say Goodbye, and especially The Stranger Song, from Cohen's 1967 record album that I purchased at age 16. I was surprised to learn that the songs Cohen sang at the group gatherings were folk songs like I Ride an Old Paint. I always loved that folk song, and had a 45 record of it when I was a girl. 

I read this book during a cold spell in spring, immersed in the bright light and sea air of a place I will never see, but feel as if I had. I loved this book for taking me to another place, and for the interesting and deeply flawed characters, and for its insight into women's role in men's lives.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

A Theater for Dreamers
by Polly Samson
Algonquin Books
Pub Date May 11, 2021
ISBN: 9781643751498
hardcover $26.95 (USD)

from the publisher

"Sublime and immersive . . . If you wish you could disappear to a Greek island right now, I highly recommend."

—Jojo Moyes, #1 bestselling author of Me Before You

"This gorgeous, glimmering summer read is itself perfect summer: irresistible and deep, Samson's lyric sentences pulling you into unforgettable sunlight and shadow."

—Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of White Houses

It’s 1960, and the world teeters on the edge of cultural, political, sexual, and artistic revolution. On the Greek island of Hydra, a proto-commune of poets, painters, and musicians revel in dreams at the feet of their unofficial leaders, the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled queen and king of bohemia. At the center of this circle of misfit artists are the captivating and inscrutable Axel Jensen, his magnetic wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian ingenue poet named Leonard Cohen.

When eighteen-year-old Erica stumbles into their world, she’s fresh off the boat from London with nothing but a bundle of blank notebooks and a burning desire to leave home in the wake of her mother’s death. Among these artists, she will find an unraveling utopia where everything is tested—the nature of art, relationships, and her own innocence.

Intoxicating and immersive, A Theater for Dreamers is a spellbinding tour-de-force about the beauty between naïveté and cruelty, chaos and utopia, artist and muse—and about the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius. Roiling with the heat of a Grecian summer, A Theater for Dreamers is, according to the Guardian, “a blissful piece of escapism” and “a surefire summer hit.”