“The writers pull their chairs closer when they hear that he’s a published poet. They are devils at a feast, tightening the circle as he talks of a little room where he might finish blackening the pages of a novel.”
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And here you thought my Hawaii photos were over… think again!! ☀️🌊🌴
A Theater for Dreamers is a coming of age story set in the 1960’s on a tiny Greek island where a British teen girl, Erica and her brother land following their mother’s death. They realize that their mother had a connection here to the island and they may not have known her as well as they thought. As they focus on their art and writing with their friends, they try to uncover just who their mother really was and find themselves in the process.
The writing of this novel is beautiful, especially descriptions of the island; in it you are easily transported away. It’s a great read for a summer escape. The challenge for me was that they were a lot of characters and they intermingled a lot and they were all running from something and trying to be someone else. So it made for a very dynamic environment but one that was sometimes meandering and hard to follow. Erica begins to learn the messiness of adulthood and that her idea of a perfect straight line for her life may not be realistic.
I also liked that the novel really took a hard look at the haves and have nots, how those who came to the island to exploit its beauty weren’t really experiencing the struggle of survival that the real residents went through.
Thanks to Algonquin Books for gifting me this novel. All opinions above are my own.
This novel takes place in Greece which is a bucket list vacation for me… tell me what is one of the places high on your bucket list?
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