I did enjoy this book well written and wonderful characters

Thank you Netgalley for a copy for an honest review

I enjoyed this book and thank Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read it.

This one didn't really grab my attention alas. I didn't really take to the character of Miss Treadway who didn't seem to be particularly consistent in terms of motivation. One minute a 'straight arrow', the next minute blotto drunk. Not an easy protagonist for the reader to connect with. There were flashes of some really vivid and engaging prose but a lot of it dragged and felt like quite hard work. I think that Emmerson is a debut novelist who will no doubt create great things in the future but who hasn't quite hit her stride with this book. I wish her all the best.

I love discovering new books and styles to read, so when I came across Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars I instantly knew it was going to be something completely new to me and I was okay with that. If I’m being honest it was the cover that drew me in. It’s stunning! But also the idea of reading about London in 1960’s intrigued me. I adore London, so really wanted to see how it was brought to life through this novel.

London, 1965. Anne Treadway, a dresser at the Galaxy Theatre lives above a Turkish cafe. When actress Iolanthe Green, whom Anna helps dress at the theatre goes missing without a trace, the whole media goes wild about the fate of the American. However, as the case grows old Anna seems to the only one left who is determined to find out that truth about what happened to Iolanthe. Her search takes her on a journey through prison cells, seaside towns, illegal doctors and jazz clubs and she sees a side of England that she has never seen before. Throughout this journey Anna starts to realise that in order to uncover Iolanthe’s secrets and find her safe, she is going to have to face up to some secrets of her own.

At first I thought this was going to be a crime novel, from the premise of the first few pages. However, my thoughts were completely wrong and I soon realised that this was a mystery novel. Which is something I haven’t had the pleasure of reading before. However, my pleasure was to be turned around as I found the plot to be rather predictable. There were times when I wasn’t shocked about the reveals at all. It was all rather anti-climatic. It was really hard for me to stay engaged when reading and at times I’m sad to say I did feel like giving up. Not something I want to happen when I’m reading a book. Rather disappointing I must say.

With regards to characters I found it really hard to connect to any of them. I really wanted to connect with Anna, but this wasn’t possible. She had the potential to be a really interesting, three dimensional character but in my opinion she was just flat and at times rather boring. Although, towards the end we did get a look into why she was like what she was and that did interest me ever so slightly. I just wish that it’d been earlier on in the story. I liked learning about Iolanthe’s backstory, and some of it was quite shocking. If I was going to have a favourite character it would probably have to be her. You could even go as far as to say she was a tragic heroine. There were too many characters in the story, and with each of them having a point of view I did get quite lost at times.

The setting was by far my favourite bit. I loved reading about London in 1960’s and it was great to have some of my favourite landmarks mentioned. Whenever a description of the setting was mentioned I automatically imagined myself there, in on the action. It was also fascinating to read about how different views on race, sex, love etc were viewed in that era of time. Totally different to what it’s like today.

Despite the few good elements, I just couldn’t connect with this story. It had the premise to be a great mystery, but it just fell short. The plot wasn’t engaging and it ended rather abruptly in a way which could confuse readers. Overall, I’m rather disappointed as I was really hoping to enjoy this novel.

Miranda Emmerson’s debut novel Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars isn’t as whimsical as the title might at first suggest. But that fits with a book where it’s not only the missing actress who is playing a role (both on and off stage) or has something to hide.

The Field of Stars of the title is the play in which American actress Iolanthe Green is appearing right before she disappears, and Miss Treadway, or Anna, her dresser for the play’s run. But I also consider The Field of Stars to be a pretty good description of the cast of characters in the book. Although there are obvious leads, such as Anna, each one takes their turn in the spotlight and is memorable, without ever making the novel seem overcrowded.

Set in the London of 1965, this is a novel which looks at issues we still grapple with today, some fifty years on. Identity, isolation, love and acceptance, race, immigration, reproductive rights, society’s expectations and the role of women all play their parts here. As does the need for publicity to keep matters fresh in people’s minds and how often it’s left to individuals to keep a case alive, once the next sensational headline hits the press and grabs public attention.

The mystery of Iolanthe’s disappearance may drive the story forward but what makes the novel work so well is how multi-layered it is. Miranda Emmerson adds real depth to Miss Treadway & the Field of Dreams with the issues she covers, the ensemble cast of outsiders she puts together and how she chooses her moment for each deft reveal of another layer to the story. There’s an obvious affection for London’s West End in her description, too, even while taking us into some of its seedier parts.

Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars is a lively and evocative novel of 1965 London which tells the engaging stories of this diverse group of people and the secrets they keep, all wrapped up in a mystery. I enjoyed how much this novel surprised me and where it took me; it covered more ground, both literally and figuratively, than I was expecting. It’s a fabulous debut and I’m excited to hear that there’s going to be a second novel featuring Miss Treadway.

I am currently purchasing books for our secondary school library for our senior students. I am trying to provide a balance of genres and periods and really try and introduce them to a wide range of modern fiction and non-fiction. This book would definitely go down well with a hypercritical teenage audience as it has a bit of everything - great insights and a narrative style that draws you in and keeps you reading whilst also making you think about a wide range of issues at the same time. I think that school libraries are definitely changing and that the book we purchase should provide for all tastes and reflect the types of books that the students and staff go on to enjoy after leaving school. MTATFOS is the kind of book that you can curl up with and totally immerse yourself in and I think it will definitely go down well at my school. I think that it was the perfect blend of A page-turning read with a strong narrative voice too! I think it would be a big hit with our seniors and will definitely recommend that we buy a copy as soon as we can.

This is a fine read, and one which emulates the period it's set in perfectly!

Anna Treadway is a dresser in the theatre; she assumes she has a close relationship with the star of the show whom she looks after, but when Iolanthe Green suddenly disappears after the show one evening, she is as much in the dark as any others. With no-one else seemingly doing very much to find Miss Green, Anna decides that the only option is for her to step up and see what she can discover.

This wasn't quite the read I was expecting, but then it is another which had apparently got stuck at the bottom of my reading list. It's a decent enough story, but it did go round the houses a bit. However, what did really appeal to me was the obvious social differences between then and now. There are some scenes which, by today's standards, are quite shocking! I enjoyed the read, but it wasn't as dazzling as I thought it was going to be.

My thanks to publisher Fourth Estate for my copy via NetGalley. These are my own unbiased opinions.

When I first caught sight of ‘Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars’ I saw so much promise, and when I started to read I found much more than I had expected. I found a mystery, a travelogue, a historical drama, and captivating human stories; and I found a colourful portrait mid-sixties London, that cleverly captured both the light and the shade of that particular time and place.

Anna Treadway was working-class and serious-minded; and she saw London as the centre of the universe, a place where it didn’t matter what her background and her history, where she could be accepted for what was and get on with living her life.

She loved the home she found in the big city, and the author made it easy for me to understand why, and she painted wonderful pictures of Anna’s London:

“Anna Treadway lived on Neal Street in a tiny two-bed flat above a Turkish café. She went to bed each night smelling cumin, lamb and lemons, listening to the jazz refrain from Ottmar’s radio below. She woke to the rumble and cry of the marketmen surging below her window and to the sharp, pungent smell of vegetables beginning to decay.

When she went to buy fruit at seven o’clock it took her past the Punjab India restaurant. Past the emerald green face of Ellen Keeley the barrow maker. Past the dirty oxblood tiles of the tube station where Neal Street ended and James Street began. Past Floral Street where the market boys drank their wages away and down, down, down to the Garden. Covent Garden: once the convent garden. Now so full of sin and earth and humanity. Still a garden really, after all these years.”

Though she hadn’t been drawn to the bright lights, Anna had found work in the theatre. She was dresser a rising star, the glamorous American actress Iolanthe Green, a rising star. A friendship grows between the two, very different young women.

Until the Monday when Lanny didn’t appear.

There could have been a simple answer but there wasn’t.

The next day all of the newspapers were abuzz with the mystery of the missing star. Theories were propounded. Concerns were raised. But it wasn’t long before there was no more news, the story slipped out of the headlines, and Anna began to worry that her friend had been forgotten.

One newspaper had asked asks why so much attention was being paid to one wealthy actress when in the past week alone seventy ordinary people have gone missing without any great fanfare at all. The police inspector in charge of the case agreed. He had more than enough work to do, why should he worry about an actress who had no ties, who had quite possibly decided to move on of her own accord?

Unimpressed with the efforts of the police, Anna sets out to discover what had happened to her friend. Detective Sergeant Barnaby Hayes, the one officer left on the case, warned her off. He was Irish, but he had made the decision to his name from Brennan to Barnaby so that he could fit into his new job and his new life in London; and he hoped that discovering whether Iolanthe has disappeared of her own accord, or whether something has happened to her, would impress his colleagues and his superiors.

Anna took no notice of his warning, she went on looking for Lanny, and she met a young man who was happy to help her. Aloysius was an accountant, a quiet and gentle man, an ardent Anglophile; and he was still coming to terms with the knowledge that his degree from the University of the West Indies wouldn’t gain him entry to exclusive gentlemen’s clubs or the city’s best restaurants, that the England he lived in had little in common with the England he had read about in books.

The mystery is cleverly constructed, and it spins around rich human stories.

Barnaby, his wife Orla and their daughter, Gracie had very different feeling about life in the big city. Turkish café owner Ottamar worked hard for his family and worried about his daughter, Samira, who was growing up and away from him. Anna’s landlord Leonard was gay in a world where that wasn’t legal. Aloysius faced appalling racism and police brutality, and yet he continued to be polite and respectful.

I was very taken with them all.

I saw that they were all outsiders, they had all come to London from somewhere else; and that some of them were carrying secrets, some of them were running away from something, and that some of them were chasing dreams and ambitions. Their different stories and characters developed nicely as the mystery unravelled.

I came to realise why finding Lanny was so very important to Anna.

My only real issues were that Lanny’s backstory was more complex than it needed to be, and that while the final act of worked emotionally it was little contrived.

The time and place are very well evoked, and though some of the language and many of the attitudes shocked me I couldn’t doubt that they were authentic.

I loved the human drama, I was intrigued by the mystery; and I have to say that this is a very accomplished first novel and that I am very interested to read whatever Miranda Emmerson writes next.

I really don’t know where to start with this review. I have very conflicted feelings about this book, I enjoyed some aspects of it but I also had problems with it (as it’s obvious by my rating of it).

When I first started reading this book I was very much enjoying it. The writing style flowed very nicely, it was very easy to read. Miss Treadway seemed like an interesting character and I wanted to know more about her. I liked the writing style and I felt that the introduction to everything (characters, setting, plot) was very well executed.

But as the story progressed I found myself more and more bored. By the end of the book I just didn’t care what was happening anymore, I just wanted to be done with it. I also didn’t particularly care about any of the characters, while they seemed interesting in the beginning they just didn’t capture my attention throughout the story. The mystery didn’t live up to what I thought it would be, I expected it to be a lot more exiting and gripping than it was. The mystery wasn’t actually the main aspect of the story, as I expected it to be, rather it served as a tool to showcase the society and the relationships of that time period.

The story follows a diverse cast of characters with their own problems and stories woven into the main story. This book also deals with important topics like: racism, xenophobia and misogyny.

OVERALL:

This was an alright book, but nothing too special. It wasn’t the exiting mystery that I expected it to be, which was rather disappointing. I’m unsure if I would recommend this book. Definitely not if you’re looking for a mystery novel. But if you enjoy historical fiction that explores society and it’s issues then this book might be for you.

Surprisingly thought provoking and changed my image of how the swinging sixties were. (Largely stemming from episodes of Heartbeat when in was was a child!) The deep rooted racism came somewhat as a surprise to me, as I think of that era through rose tinted glasses. The mystery at the heart of this novel was somewhat quirky and different which I think makes this novel stand out. The characterisation is excellent, very sharp, and colourful although not all the characters are likeable people.
I'm always a little cynical at reading a first novel by an author who is apparently destined to be the next big thing. However, I was not at all disappointed. The writing was confident and most importantly competent. This author is most definitely the next big thing, I will recommend to friends and family.

Although the main plot revolves around the disappearance of actress Iolanthe Green and the search for her by Anna Treadway, her dresser, I think this story is about how people from all backgrounds end up in London (some time near the end of the 1950s or early 1960s) to reinvent themselves. Nearly everyone has a secret past and during the increasingly desperate search for Iolanthe, the reader learns not only of her past, but of Anna's, her fellow seeker Aloysius, the police detective Barnaby and the cafe owner. London itself is a character as Anna and Alyosius travel around in search of Iolanthe. The mystery of her disappearance is lost in the deeper story of reinvention. A very interesting read.

The story centres on a missing woman in 60's London but is much more than the search to find her. Woven into an era of prejudices and social injustice, referencing criminal history via the moors murders Emerson creates a vivid pictrue of the times and its problems. A whole cast of characters, fully defined and imaginable it is a book that has both deceit and intrigue and has left me wanting more - I hope Miss Treadway returns to our shelves soon

This is a book set in the swinging London of the 1960s but it doesn't really live up to the blurb on the cover.
Not my cup of tea, thanks.

The synopsis sounded great and encouraged me to request this book however, I just could not get into this book at all. After several attempts and determined persistence I finally admitted defeat.

This novel starts off initially as a mystery but then through the experiences of the main characters turns into a study of immigrant’s experiences in 1960’s London.
As other reviewers have stated the cover is a bit misleading as I was expecting a 60’s inspired comedy caper but instead what I got was a mystery tale that covered some very serious topics such as racism, abortion and missing persons.
I found the descriptions of 60’s London to be quite unlike the ‘swinging sixties’ often portrayed in other books or on the tv, where it is either teaming with cool, hip young mini skirted girls who lounge around in Carnaby Street, or Kray type hoodlums who rule the East End.
For me the story was not so much the characters search for Miss Lolanthe Green but more about how each of them had come to London seeking one thing but finding they do not quite fit into society as they had hoped and how they cope with this. A good portrayal of social attitudes of the time with some colourful characters.

Thanks to the publishers for the chance to review this book.
The premise is of an actress going missing and the search both official and unofficial to find her. Is she dead, abducted or just lost? We have various people looking for her, some are not what they seem to be or hide secrets. We also see the ugly face of racism in the 1960s
I felt the author overused similes and a couple of chance encounters were just, in my opinion, laughable.
That said I enjoyed the book , but found it a little strange.
I understand that the author has written a non fiction book on her travels in South East Asia, I will put that on my 'to read' list.

A very strange story, not very free flowing and with characters that I could not engage with at all. seemed to be trying to make points but not succeeding in a meaningful way. Disappointing read.

Extraordinarily frustrating book. Hard work mostly. I felt driven to know the end, and found myself checking "how many pages are left" occasionally.

The prose is quite leaden in the first pages (new author, forgiven) and then picks up into a comfortable pace, mostly literate and of mild interest. A mystery is presented, but it is only a McGuffin for most of the book, and only becomes prominent suddenly towards the end.

<b>There are, however, moments of true brilliance, especially the scene in the Roaring Twenties nightclub.</b> There are some very sweet encounters, but there is far too much confusion of unanchored plot lines. Frequent flashbacks intermingled for all the characters, without discipline, disrupt the flow of the book and confuses the reader.

Anna is interesting and sympathetic, as are several other characters. Some of their lives and challenges are expected, some are tragic, and some are left frustratingly unresolved at the end.

What the feck happens with Orla and Brennan?

And what is the last page about, December 17th?

All-in-all, I would say that Ms Emmerson has good potential as an author, but needs a far stronger editor and guidance if she is to achieve success.

Really enjoyed this book. It is set in the sixties but the culture now seems so different from now. The characters were well drawn each having their own particular life crises but all drawn together neatly through the disappearance of Iolanthe Green. Would recommend and would look out for future books from this author

Literally the most inventive thing in historical fiction I've read for a while - the fact it chimed with contemporary accounts of the era made it, even before one got involved in the story, astoundingly real and vivid.