What an enjoyable, well written novel with memorable characters, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I wasn’t sure what to expect of this novel, but it far exceeded my expectations.
At first the story appears to be about a missing person, the actress, Iolanthe Green, but as her dresser, Anna, searches for her, it develops into a magical, mystery tour whether by bus or on foot, through the snowy streets of Sixties London, and onwards.
I was born in the Sixties and the author’s vivid descriptions brings to life what I missed, good and bad, as the novel develops into a much deeper exploration of issues as diverse and controversial as abortion, and different types of racism and discrimination, all set against, what feels to me, a very authentic backdrop.
The story has Dickensian overtones in its social commentary, there are some very uncomfortable moments, and questions are subtly posed, what would you do in this situation- particularly if you are a ‘good’ person like Anna ?
I read a fascinating interview with Miranda Emmerson and can now understand why the settings for her novel are so vivid and easy to imagine, not only did she pretty much grow up in a theatre herself, but she did huge amounts of research. Her previous work of writing drama adaptations for radio translates effortlessly into an extremely visual way of writing for a reader, not just a listener.
I am pleased I was given the opportunity to read this book, and am delighted to learn that the characters will continue to be developed in a series of novels, as they have so much more to say.

This book started going in one direction and I thought ok ... might be a good read, but then veered off in a completely different way. It's very well written, but I thought the author may have lost concentration at times because as a reader I often thought hang on ... who's this and what's going on? Due to this I can only give a 3* rating.

It is London, 1965 and an actress goes missing. Her dresser, Anna Treadway, is disappointed by how little the authorities seem to care and decides to start investigating on her own.

This is a lot more than a mystery novel. [book:Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars|32320986] is a surprisingly moving novel, peppered with strong characters and intelligent social commentary. Highly recommended.

(Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy!)

This book was not at all what I expected but it was a great read all the same. It sounded as if it was going to be a whodunit about a missing actress but turned out to be a much deeper story. It centres around said missing actress Iolanthe Green and the search for her led by her dresser Anna Treadway and by the police led by CID officer Barnaby Hayes. Set in the swinging sixties in London it tells the stories of many people of different races and creeds and of different attitudes to sex and procreation. Living in hopefully more enlightened times it comes as a shock to read just how racist and small-minded the UK was just a relatively short time ago. Be prepared for language which today is rightly unacceptable when people of colour are spoken about..
The subject of race, what it means to be different and how individual people deal with it is at the very heart of the story and it is an enjoyable if at times, uncomfortable, read.

Just could not get into this book, started reading a few times but could not gel with the characters or the story line. It was well written and would appeal to other audiences, just not me I'm afraid

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes you get a book and read it and think "this is just perfect". Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars in such a book.

Set in swinging London in the mid 60s, on a few snow-bound days in November, it focuses on a small group of characters brought together - metaphorically: they never all meet and one is in the USA - by the disappearance of the actress, Iolanthe Green, then playing in the West End. The Miss Treadway of the title - Anna - is Lanny's dresser. Brennan - or, as he'd prefer to be called, Brandon - Hayes is the young Irish policeman trying to find her. Orla, Brennan's wide, and their daughter Gracie, also appear as does a young West Indian, Aloysius and the owner of the Turkish café on Neal Street above which Anna lives, and his family.

Emmerson has a deceptively simple style, very cinematic, in which she'll follow one character till they someone else, then switch to them, then to a third person. Sometimes she'll take someone's thoughts back to explore their earlier life, as with Orla, trapped at home by the burden of childcare and almost a stranger to her husband, showing how things came to be.

And there is a great deal to be explained. Several of these characters have mysteries about them. It slowly becomes clear that Lanny has been inventing and reinventing her life. Who are all the people she is paying money to? What happened to her parents? But you might expect that of an actress. It's more of a surprise to learn - gradually - of the other inventions and reinventions going on here. Brennan has a adopted a more English name to fit in among the Met Police, and ways to accompany it - looking the other way when a "coloured" man is arrested for no reason, beaten, traduced or when a girl is brought in for no crime worse that being out late at night in a short skirt. Ottmar, the café owner, has morphed from being a serious journalist back home on Cyprus to a driven supplier of exotic refreshments. Orla has changed. Anna has changed. Aloysius came to London expecting to be a gentleman like those he read about in Waugh and Christie - but now sees that he and his society aren't in those books.

Everybody is busy reinventing or rediscovering themselves, consciously or not, playing with identities, in a society that seems, almost visibly, to be delivering itself of its own future - from the music playing in the "coloured" bars to the memories of wars, of internment, to the stars "said to drink" in those Soho bars and clubs.

But just as you begin to think this is all about rose tinted nostalgia for the 60s, Emmerson pulls out her cosh and whacks you on the back of the head. There are desperate women, who will be ruined or be unable to cope if they have babies. There is casual racism, not even winked at by those in authority, simply accepted. There are all kinds of people dreaming of a better world but creeping round the edges of this one, trying not to draw attention, from the gay men in the top flat to Lanny herself who's buried on the edge of several kinds of ruin.

While the thread that draws this novel together is Lanny's disappearance and the search for her, and we might think at the start it's going to be a crime story or a detective novel, it isn't. There is detective work, yes, and some danger, but really, it's an exploration both of a very distinct time and place and of some brilliant characters who comes across very much as real people, making their way, living with regrets, looking backwards or forwards and trying to puzzle out who they are and where they're going. (And who everyone else is and where they're going to - with cues of class and accent and race studied and acted on and outsiders spotted and excluded: "Nothing can ever be too English, can it? Nothing can ever be too pure.")

There is some brilliantly sharp characterisation - Anna's tendency, for example, so see men as obstacles, as something awkward, potential problems, dangerous: it's a long time till we find out why. Or Aloysius saying sadly "I want the world to be a gentler place than it is... I don't think that is a many sentiment to have." The 'white person nod'. Two lovers who first met at a funeral and fell out of love when a child came along.

It is, simply, a breathtakingly beautiful, heartbreaking and evocative book. Buy it, read it, get it for your friends, family and workmates. Do it now. Go on!

"I haven't met a woman or man in my life - not even the wisest soul - who wasn't an idiot in some way or another."

This was not what I was expecting at all. It starts as a sort of Agatha Christie, or Ngaio Marsh mystery, but goes in a completely different direction.

Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars delves into the real London of the Swinging Sixties. Under the veil of peace and love there is racism and hatred brewing. It reminds me a little of Zadie Smith's writing; dealing with issues of race and what it is to be English.

The book covers several more difficult themes, including sexism, war, abortion and depression. The sad thing is that we are still dealing today with a lot of these issues.

This makes it sound like a really heavy read but, though it is very dark in places, Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars is also laced with humour and has a dry way of looking at the world.

"'The government is defecating in its collective knickers, Hayes.'
'I'm sure it is, sir.'"

The book also benefits from original and well-drawn characters. I particularly liked Anna and Aloysius and could feel the connection between the two. Anna Treadway is more than just the typical girl with gumption character who you know is going to fall in love and settle down by the end of the book.

"Her temperament seemed to fall into phases, like seasons of the year. She would blossom for a little while, establish friendships and socialise and then she would retreat and regroup, becoming watchful, even fearful, for months at a time."

Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars is also just wonderfully written. Emmerson's writing is almost poetic, yet it is not difficult to wade through, the perfect balance.

"London seemed romantic, with its twisting parks and grime covered frontages; its dark-stained river flanked by rictus-mouthed fish who held with their tails a trail of softly glowing lights: the epitome of grand metropolitan strangeness."

At some points the story was a little difficult to keep up with and there were a couple of coincidences in the plot that do stretch the belief. But these are only small issues. Overall Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars is a strong, surprising and beautifully written book.

My Rating: 4/5

I received an ARC of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to the author and publisher.

My delight for this year. I didn't know what to expect and I have been wonderfully entertained by this fabulous novel set mainly in London in 1965.
This is a guaranteed best seller if sufficient people get the chance to read this original book that is strong on relationships and character driven.
Miss Tradway is pretty but you wouldn't immediately see her in all her splendour. She is much less than the graduate her parents so desired for her. Escaping to London she has slowly formed a life for herself, initially as a waitress in a cafe run by a Turkish family and then as a dresser at one of the local theatres. Anna has an ability to bring out the best in others, she is a caring person who wins the trust of the leading actress in the latest production 'The Field of Stars'.
When this gentle, spendthift woman goes missing one weekend, her disappearance is only noticed when she fails to meet her stage call for Monday's show.
With the Police losing interest, Anna takes it upon herself to investigate the disappearance meeting many interesting people along the way.
DS Barnaby Hayes inherits the case and he will spare no effort to find Iolanthe Green, an American no-one seems to miss, people other than Anna thought was a fantasist.
In the new police investigation taken on by DS Hayes more background information comes to light and slowly the mystery unfolds, but in truth Miss Green becomes more of a zephyr and more akin to a role played by an actress. Anna knows what she knows about her friend and she worries that she is in trouble and no-one is looking for her.
Great sense of place in sixties Soho as Anna trawls the local clubs and night spots. In one venue she teams up with an accountant, Aloysius, originally from Jamaica.
I loved the use of locations across the city. The sense of travel as Anna & Aloysius have to take buses together.
Although this is not an historical piece as such it is a book rooted in its time. I applaud the gentle way issues like police brutality, racism, immigration, pregnancy outside marriage and homosexuality are touched upon with a lightness of brush that draws the picture where words are not then needed.
So Anna & Aloysius cannot sit together on a bus comfortably; he often has to wait outside and when there together members of the public feel he is exploiting her.
So the story is beautifully crafted as the disappearance is investigated and Anna & Aloysius follow their own leads. Meanwhile time is given to flesh out all the main characters so that no page, parragraph or sentence is wasted.
At its heart this is a story of identity and finding oneself, told through the lives of all the main characters and their families since all have secrets, all are immigrants/outsiders and each in their own way is trying to fit in and not be noticed as different.
As London is proud of its diversity today this clever book looks at a time when things were not so easy for the newcomers based on their names, accents, religion and colour of skin.
I will struggle to find a better book this year that I pick up with such limited knowledge about the work or its author. This is a tour de force, a book that moves you while uplifting you as well.
I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This book turned out to be not what I was expecting at all. I think I had in mind a jolly 60s caper (partly because of the lovely cover) and what I actually got was a serious story about racism and family problems amongst other things.

There's a lot going on in this story and quite a few different strands. The disappearance of Iolanthe Green, the missing actress, is what the story revolves around and yet in a way the focus was on everybody but her. We meet policeman Barnaby Hayes and he features a fair amount in the story, but I was left wondering what the point of him being such a main character was, and the conclusion to his story was sadly lacking.

The ending was extremely abrupt and I kept pressing the button on my Kindle thinking that there must be more. I couldn't even remember who the final character mentioned was and had to go back and search through the book. Even then, I'm not sure what the relevance of mentioning them was.

I liked many aspects of this book. I liked Anna Treadway and I particularly liked her gentle and kind friend, Aloysius. Theirs were the sections of the story that stood out for me. Whilst there isn't a major 60s feel to it, I did enjoy reading about the places that they visited whilst searching for Iolanthe. I thought the prejudices of the period were portrayed quite well and there were some sections that were very uncomfortable and shocking to read.

This is a hard book for me to review. I did feel that all the strands didn't quite come together. The author is a lovely writer but maybe the level of detail and the number of characters was too much for me. I do think the book will be a success though and Miranda Emmerson has a fine way with words.

A beautiful book set in a time when the country was a different place in terms of ethnicity and gender. Very believable and lovely to have a mainly positive outcome.

I really enjoyed this book.

It's an intriguing mystery about the disappearance of an actress and her dresser's search to find her. The narrative offers insightful commentary on 1960s attitudes towards race, sexuality and women's rights but in a very relatable way.

The characters are well developed and authentic. The eponymous Miss Treadway is a likeable protagonist and, as a reader, you remain with her throughout the novel, uncovering the mystery with her as the plot moves on. The book has pace, intrigue and will keep you enthralled until the end.

The novel offers narrative voices from various different perspectives and gives the reader an opportunity to see several versions of the same events. As the novel develops and the characters' lives become increasing interwoven, the book really comes into its own and the quality of Emmerson's writing shines through.

Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars is an entertaining mystery romp through 1960s London and well worth a read.

I expected to like this book a lot, but I'm afraid I found it rather dull. It tries to make important points about race and diversity in general, but it didn't engage me enough to make them with any force.

The story, set in late 1965 is ostensibly about the disappearance of an actress and the attempts of her dresser (the eponymous Anna Treadway) and the police to locate her. In fact, it is largely about the characters of the story and lengthy back-stories are rather ploddingly revealed of Anna herself, a West Indian man whom she meets, a Cypriot café-owner, a Northern Irish police sergeant and so on and so on. It was all reasonably competently done, but I never became involved enough in the characters to care sufficiently so it just got rather boring, I'm afraid.

Part of the problem is the period setting. I am, sadly, old enough to remember the mid-60s, and this just didn't feel like that time to me. Again, it wasn't badly done as such; there were only a few anachronisms in speech and nothing stood out as being out of place, but I never got any real sense of period either. There are some slightly clunky topical references to try to establish the period, but I just never felt that I was there somehow.

This is not an actively bad book by any means. Miranda Emerson writes decent prose and it's all perfectly competent, but I just couldn't find any real period atmosphere or interest in the characters. Others have plainly enjoyed this far more than I did, but I can't really recommend it.

Set in London in the mid-1960s. Theatre land has welcomed American actress Iolanthe Green as the leading lady in a new play at the Galaxy Theatre. As the book opens Lanny has gone missing and a media storm has ensued. She said goodbye to her dresser Anna Treadwell at the end of her show and then just vanished into thin air. When she didn’t return after the weekend break the theatre raises the alarm and Barnaby Hayes is tasked with the police investigation.
I chose this book thinking that it would be a crime thriller set in the world of London theatre and in many ways that is a big part of its appeal. As the story starts to unravel you realise that it is more about prejudices, mass immigration and the integration of those immigrants into an existing society.
Anna’s employer and landlord is a homosexual and lives in fear of being “outed” in an England that still prosecutes gay men for their sexuality. The café below her flat is run by a Turkish family who try hard to be a part of their new environment. Their daughter struggles to balance the expectations of her family and faith with the freedoms available to her. Even policeman Hayes is not exempt from prejudice. As an Irishman his superior officer calls him “Mick” and classes him as being lazy just because of his origins.
When the investigation into Lanny’s disappearance seems to be going nowhere Anna takes it upon herself to follow in her footsteps and finds herself in a rather less salubrious part of Soho. In an area of clubs and bars that are largely frequented by the new West Indian immigrants. Helped by a young man who comes to her aid Anna is soon experiencing overt and direct racism as she encounters police brutality and public mistrust of her black companion.
In some ways this is quite distracting and you find yourself having to manually sift through the threads of the story to keep it straight in your head. Because of that it is hard to categorise this book. It purports to be a mystery story with the investigation into Lanny Green’s disappearance. It is also a commentary on race relations and social attitudes in England in the Sixties. Unfortunately for me it fails to do either justice and the social commentary becomes too much of a distraction from the main story.
Supplied by Net Galley and Harper Collins UK in exchange for an honest review.

Although this book has a lot going for it, it’s not the upbeat mystery I was hoping for. 3/5 stars.

There are many things to like about Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars. I think this is the first story I’ve read which is set in 1960s’ London, a location which was brilliantly rendered, interesting and refreshing.

The diversity of the characters is also impressive. Aloysius, a Jamaican accountant, quickly became my favourite. The story moves at a good pace and there’s always something happening, mostly because the main characters are roving all over London and then southern England in search of the missing Iolanthe.

The story is told in close third person, switching between various characters’ POVs. All these viewpoints are well-realised, but I didn’t get enough time with any one character before the POV switched to another. Unfortunately this meant I failed to connect properly with any of them and so wasn’t that engaged in their various missions. The disconnect I felt towards the characters’ present goals was compounded by their flitting between the present and reminiscing about past events.

From the book cover and blurb, I was expecting a far more upbeat read: an exciting, lighthearted mystery with a sprinkling of romance. What I got was a meditation on displacement, the experience of being foreign and disadvantaged, and the evils of racism, misogyny and xenophobia. I think if I’d gone into the book expecting the heavier subject matter, I might have had a more positive experience.

Overall: an interesting and ambitious book, but probably best to know exactly what you’re getting into before you dive into the story.

Thank you to HarperCollins UK, 4th Estate and NetGalley for giving me an e-copy of this book. My review is unbiased and honest. Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars will be published on 12th January.

Miss Treadway & the Field of Stairs is an excellent book. The search, in the late 1960s, for a missing American Actress by her Dresser is an interesting plot in its own right whilst introducing you to illegal practices (of the time) and a fringe normally only seen by the few. There are also developing relationships which also reflect on further attitudes and issues of the time. Be prepared to have your emotions provoked by this backcloth.

Well written and pacy, this is a book I was reluctant to put down. A fine contribution to the world of fiction by Miranda Emmerson. I look forward to her next book and many more.

Very Highly Recommended..

In a flat above a Turkish cafe lives Anna Treadway, a dresser at the Galaxy Theatre.

When an American actress disappears after an evening performance at the Galaxy the newspapers speculate about her fate. But as the news grows old and the case gets colder, Anna is the only person determined to find out the truth. The investigation will take Anna to an England she has not discovered........

I loved this well written novel set in Soho in 1965.

I would like to thank NetGalley, HarperCollins UK and the author Miranda Emerson for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.