Review: A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson
Lilith Book Club is an anglophone book club in Paris focusing on feminist/LGBTQI texts. They have graciously joined our team of contributors, and are sharing their review of their September book club session, A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson. Follow Lilith on Instagram @lilithbookclub.
You could change almost any aspect of this book and it would be an improvement.
That sounds harsh but it fairly accurately reflects our disappointment with this book. To back up, we selected The Theatre of Dreamers by Polly Samson as our book club book based on reams of positive reviews. It promised an idyllic Greek island setting and a dramatic gendered dissection of the meaning of genius, with the famous romance between Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen dangled as bait.
Well, it delivered on the Greek island. The book is utterly obsessed with Hydra and describes it endlessly. No bush, stone, house, or boat goes unrecorded. The smells and tastes of the island are detailed with the ardor of a naturalist, but a little of this goes a very long way, and there is a lot of nature in The Theatre of Dreamers – the island is essentially the main character in the book – but it doesn’t contribute much except as a backdrop to a very confusing, unstructured narrative.
Which brings us to the story. The main character is a young woman, Erica, who has recently lost her mother and heads to the island in search of her hidden secret past accompanied by a recalcitrant brother. On arrival, she tumbles into the expat community of artists and musicians that cling to the island and past glories, as interchangeable characters hop beds and bitterly rage against the constraints of their lives, as they desperately try to churn out a novel or two to keep themselves fed.
It’s a good set-up, but the execution is horribly flawed. The narrator is too young and naïve to comprehend much of what she observes and is consistently stymied in her attempts to find out the truth about her mother. The cast of characters expands to the point of utter confusion, with some characters banished as others tumble into view, then leave again, at least one in an unintentionally hilarious manner.
The central couple – Charmaine Clift and George Johnston – who function as Erica’s adopted parents are well-drawn and deserve better, and in the few scenes where they are given space completely fascinate. But these scenes are all too brief as the book struggles to cope with an endless parade of faces. This is a shame because they embody what promised to be a central theme of the book – can a woman writer find space to write when her male partner is also a writer?
The last aspect of the story concerns Leonard and Marianne, and the book keeps them at arm’s length, while continuously slipping lyrics from Cohen’s songs and poems into the narrative in a way that becomes excruciating. We learn little about either or their romance. Cohen is treated reverently, but as a result, hovers around the narrative without ever fully entering it. The same could be said in fact about the narrator, Erica, who despite being the eyes and eyes through which we experience all the events that take place on the island, completely fails to convince as a character or as a person about whom we care.
When we finally do learn the truth about her mother (the book delivers an avalanche of a plot, literally drunkenly, in the last 40 pages) it’s a massive anti-climax, and far too late to make a difference.
It’s a shame. There are some wonderful characters and moments scattered among these pages, and with some judicious trimming, a decent structure, and, fundamentally, a more sympathetic narrator, it would have made for a marvelous book. And ultimately, there’s little need for Leonard Cohen to appear in it at all. But, then, would anyone have bought it?