Stephen Herrick

And so those things, because we carry our own image of what Leonard Cohen talked or the way he talked and the way he carried himself in public, and we also have our view of what Shamian was like, it's a difficult process to then fictionalise them, if you like.

And it means that Erica seems to be witness to a lot of very private conversations.

So Marianne bears her soul to Erica regularly about the shortcomings of her husband, the Norwegian novelist Axel Jensen.

I think they probably all did.

I think the theme of this book is don't marry a writer.

particularly if you're a woman and a writer yourself, because it's not going to be fun.

But that's what Polly Sampson does really well, which is she gets into the lives of these women who have their own lives behind these male authors.

Charmian with George Johnston, Marianne with Axel Jensen and Leonard Cohen and Erica herself with her

kind of wussy boyfriend, Jimmy, who goes there with her and wants to be a poet and racks off after a while, luckily.

So it is really about the lives of the women, and that's what is the beauty of the book, I find.

The book starts with Erica as an old woman on Hidra just after, in 2016, just after Leonard Cohen, her friend, has died.

And it then takes us back in Erica's memory to being a 17-year-old in London with a dominant, aggressive father and wanting to get away after the death of her mother.

And her mother has left her some money.

And Erica and her boyfriend and Erica's brother Bobby drive across Europe all the way to Greece and then catch a ferry to Hydra and join the expat community.

Erica's only 17 and she's looking for adventure and she's, like everyone on the island, seems to want to be an artist.

And she befriends Charmian, who lived above Erica's family in London, we soon discover.

And Charmian becomes a mother figure to Erica throughout the book.

Look, I loved the writing in the book.

I thought it was fantastic and I could wander the alleyways of Hydra with Polly Sampson for a very long time.

She writes beautifully of the island and Erica is a very compassionate, strong narrator.