View source for Book Reviews: This Week apos;s Best New Fiction

A Theatre For Dreamers<br> Polly Samson                                                                                 Bloomsbury, £14.99<br>To a teenage girl from England, in mourning for her dead mother, the Greek island of Hydra seems like an earthly paradise.<br><br>The year is 1960 and the picturesque, car-free island has attracted bohemian types from all over the globe, including the young Leonard Cohen. <br>         <br>Erica, Samson's impressionable young heroine, soon finds herself on the fringes of an uncharted world of free love, nude swimming and heavy drinking.<br><br>It will all end in tears, inevitably, but this well-crafted novel beautifully captures the texture of a halcyon age in which anything seems possible.<br>Max Davidson<br> <br>Jack & Bet<br>Sarah Butler                                                                                             Picador,  [https://hydraclubbioknikokex7njhwuahc2l67lfiz7z36md2jvopda7nch.com hydraclubbioknikokex7njhwuahc2l67lfiz7z36md2jvopda7nchid.onion] £14.99<br>Kind, quiet Jack Chalmers is besotted with his wife of 70 years, the garrulous, glamorous Bet.<br><br>Age is taking its toll however, and their son, the oft-married Tommy, wants them to move into sheltered accommodation. <br>A chance meeting with a Romanian student seems to offer a lifeline, enabling them to stay put while she helps out around their cramped flat, but her presence soon prompts the spilling of old secrets. <br>         <br>This is a tender, unsentimental exploration of the bittersweet joys of lifelong companionship, beautifully capturing the pangs of ageing and the treacheries of time.<br>Eithne Farry<br> <br>Aria<br>Nazanine Hozar                                                                                        Viking, £14.99<br>This intricate novel tells the story of Aria, an abandoned new-born baby who is found and adopted by Behrouz, a lowly army driver, and of the three different women who mother her at various stages of her life.  <br>         <br>Set in a vibrantly depicted Tehran and spanning a 30-year period leading up to the 1981 Iranian Revolution, Hozar's serpentine narrative shows how the inequality and corruption of [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Iranian%20society Iranian society] under the Shah gives way to something more sinister. <br>While it could have done with a little more editing, it's a spellbinding debut.<br>Simon Humphreys  <br>