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A Theatre for Dreamers: The Sunday Times bestseller
Polly Samson
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Description for A Theatre for Dreamers: The Sunday Times bestseller
Paperback.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ‘Delicious’ Nigella Lawson ‘Clever and beguiling’ Guardian ‘Sublime and immersive’ Jojo Moyes Erica is eighteen and ready for freedom. It’s the summer of 1960 when she lands on the sun-baked Greek island of Hydra where she is swept up in a circle of bohemian poets, painters, musicians, writers and artists, living tangled lives. Life on their island paradise is heady, dream-like, a string of seemingly endless summer days. But nothing can last forever. ‘A surefire summer hit ... At once a blissful piece of escapism and a powerful meditation on art and sexuality’ ... Read moreObserver ‘Heady armchair escapism ... An impressionistic, intoxicating rush of sensory experience’ Sunday Times ‘If summer was suddenly like a novel, it would be like this one. Immaculate’ Andrew O’Hagan Show Less
Product Details
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Place of Publication
London, United Kingdom
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 2 to 4 working days
About Polly Samson
Polly Samson is the author of two short story collections and two previous novels. Her work has been shortlisted for numerous prizes, translated into several languages and has been dramatised on BBC Radio 4. A Theatre for Dreamers debuted at number 2 on the Sunday Times bestseller list. She has written lyrics for four Number One albums, and is a ... Read moreFellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Most recently Polly Samson has written introductions to Muswell Press's 2021 reissues of Charmian Clift's Mermaid Singing and Peel Me a Lotus. pollysamson.com @PollySamson Show Less
Reviews for A Theatre for Dreamers: The Sunday Times bestseller
Samson is an intensely sensual writer, conjuring up blue skies, the tang of wild herbs, the vivid splash of bougainvillea ... As good as a Greek holiday, and may be the closest we get this year
Financial Times
As dreamily nostalgic as Cohen’s song Famous Blue Raincoat
Alex Preston
Observer, New Year Highlights
Sleazy, evocative, ... Read morebeautiful and entertaining
Stuart Turton
Guardian Summer Reading Picks
A thoroughly enjoyable drama of hedonism, enchantment and emotional beastliness
Times Literary Supplement
A coming of age story set among a group of artists and poets, including Leonard Cohen, on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960. She is so good at mentally indelible imagery
Jojo Moyes
Guardian
This well-crafted novel beautifully captures the texture of a halcyon age in which anything seems possible
Mail on Sunday
Spellbinding … An immersive read, steeped in nostalgia. Samson’s poetic prose is so evocative that, by the end, you find yourself googling those entrancing images of Hydra, 1960, just to wallow further in the poignancy of it all
Vanity Fair
The novel has a lightly worn heft to it, as it probes freedom and creativity … By the end of this enjoyable novel, which makes vivid an interesting moment and place, you discover people have paid a price – a heavy one – for that freedom in the sun
The Times
Samson recreates one heady summer there with impeccably ripening prose …This is a slow, deliberately languorous novel that mixes real-life figures with fictional counterparts. It is sunbaked, stewed in alcohol, and wonderfully gossipy
i paper
Intoxicating ... Highly accomplished ... A testament to Samson’s transportive prose
Spectator
A surefire summer hit ... Feels at once like a gift and an escape route ... At once a blissful piece of escapism and a powerful meditation on art and sexuality – just the book to bring light into these dark days
Observer
Heady armchair escapism ... An impressionistic, intoxicating rush of sensory experience
Sunday Times
By the end the reader may be unable to decide whether Hydra enchanted or cursed those attracted by its primitive beauty, cheap rents and easy access to sex, drugs and performance poetry … A novel about the treatment of women by artistic men
The Times
Beautiful ... Perfect if you want to escape the drudgery of another lentil dinner and dream of 1960s Hydra with Leonard Cohen
Dolly Alderton It is a grand read and the prose falls translucently like the air ... Superb work and a delightful novel
Thomas Keneally Such a lyrical, elegant and beautifully told story
Joanna Cannon So vivid that you can see the sun-washed white houses and blue seas
Good Housekeeping, Book of the Month
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
Erin Kelly This radiant novel will transport you straight to Greece - a blessing at a time when most of us are stuck in our homes
Cosmopolitan
Delicious
Nigella Lawson This well-crafted novel beautifully captures the texture of a halcyon age in which anything seems possible
Daily Mail
A coming of age story set among a group of artists and poets, including Leonard Cohen, on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960. She is so good at mentally indelible imagery
Jojo Moyes
Guardian
Dreamily nostalgic
Observer, Fiction to look out for in 2020
About real people living in Hydra in 1960. Steeped in nostalgia that's both sad and beautiful. It's fascinating, immersive and so MOVING
Marian Keyes Hands down the best book I've read all year. Luminous, immersive, gorgeous, profound
Joanne Harris Her best work yet, so evocative and alive with the scents and colours of a Greek summer ... Among the best prose writers of her generation. The writing is just delicious
Cressida Connolly I was utterly entranced. It feels entirely true and effortless and compelling – in the way that all great novels do
Justine Picardie If summer was suddenly like a novel, it would be like this one. Immaculate
Andrew O'Hagan A seductive story, suffused with nostalgia
Sunday Mirror
This is a sheer delight - I’ve never been to Hydra but this book transports you and miraculously, you are there in 1960
Jenny Eclair A glorious novel
Kate Mosse A beautifully written, evocative, inspiring novel. I devoured it
Kathy Lette Polly Samson has created such a dazzling evocation of an era and its mindset. Here, the island of Hydra is a geographical place but a psychological one too, populated by beautiful and damaged characters who pull you down into its pages for another café gossip, another moonlit swim, another drink. This book is a bohemian idyll meticulously drawn, and unsparingly exposed. It is like going away to paradise, then coming back rather wiser. You don’t read this book – you live it
Marina Hyde A luscious seduction of a book
Sofka Zinovieff Samson's story sizzles with the Greek sun and seduction
The i
Praise for The Kindness: ‘An addictive, cleverly structured and intriguing relationship story of lies and flawed communication
SUNDAY TIMES Book of the Week
Annoyingly close to perfection
INDIA KNIGHT
SUNDAY TIMES
A story that entices you to revel in its languid, beautifully written prose while demanding that you turn the page to discover the secrets it holds
OBSERVER Paperback of the week
Beautifully written, with twists engineered like a thriller
STEPHANIE MERRITT
OBSERVER Books of the Year
A book to cherish, to recommend, to return to
FINANCIAL TIMES
Brilliant, tender and beautiful
ANDREW O'HAGAN Beautifully written and plotted with serpentine cunning, Samson’s novel is what might be called a love story for adults: unsentimental, at times harsh, but ultimately uplifting
MAIL ON SUNDAY
Gorgeously chilling … Samson seems to write in colours
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
Shining, poetic and sumptuous … Polly Samson is a writer of great insight and sensitivity
JOANNE HARRIS A richly sensory writer … A sumptuous, serious story
DAILY MAIL
Lush, lyrical prose … The Kindness is to be read more than once, not merely to enjoy again the beauty of the writing and the considerable insights into human experience, but to test the earlier narrative with the knowledge of what is to come
INDEPENDENT
Compelling … Atmospheric and vividly told, the book is a poignant examination of love, guilt, betrayal and the deception that can lie at the heart of every relationship
TATLER
Family proves far from idyllic in this poetic, sensual story of betrayal and lies. Writer and lyricist Samson’s prose is dazzlingly evocative, as she explores how relationships are rarely what they seem
GLAMOUR
Secrets and misunderstandings fuel Polly Samson’s involving, melancholy and cleverly constructed second novel … This is a mature and haunting novel about love and loss that asks if we all, in the end, see what we want to see
METRO
This is elegant, witty writing, informed throughout by generosity and wise perceptiveness. Dealing with many kinds of love, and with misunderstanding, betrayal, grief and forgiveness, the novel dares to posit, ultimately, the possibility of redemption. It is a book to cherish, to recommend, to return to
FT WEEKEND
Intensely evocative … Samson treats this difficult subject with candour and compassion … The novel’s effortlessness, its readability, sweeps everything in its wake … This is a book to relax into
DAILY TELEGRAPH
Polly Samson’s mastery of the English language is powerful and impressive
DAILY EXPRESS
Fills the back of your eyes with light like an Aegean sky, and has that rare and lovely quality of making you nostalgic for something you never had ... It perfectly takes the reader into a different world. Which we could all do with
Louisa Young Show Less
