Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars: A Novel

Book Review: Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars

A Novel  by Miranda Emmerson.

In 1965 Soho, the glamorous America actress, Iolanthe Green, goes missing after an evening performance at the Galaxy Theatre. Initially, there is a flurry of police and media attention, but soon the police searches and newspaper reports go quiet, and it is down to a very determined Anna Treadway – dresser to Iolanthe - to continue the search.

Along the way we are introduced to a Cypriot Muslim family, running the Turkish café downstairs from Anna’s flat; Leonard, who owns the building and lives on the top floor and gave Anna entry to the Theatre; Inspector Hayes and his disillusioned wife; and Aloysius, a Jamaican immigrant with a love of English literature.

In what appears to be a straight-forward mystery, Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars becomes a patchwork of racial bigotry and sexual prejudice, class division, police brutality, prostitution, backstreet abortions, broken promises and disappointments. Suddenly we are whisked away from the bright lights of Theatre land and plunged into the dark backstreets of London.

No-one is as they seem, from the Police Inspector trying to hide his Northern Irish roots, the actress Iolanthe Green hiding her mixed race background, and the Jamaican Aloysius desperately wanting to be a stereotypical middle class Englishman. Even Anna Treadway has her secrets.

Miranda Emmerson is a travel writer and dramatist. In her debut novel she has crafted a fascinating and detailed account of a not so swinging London in the early 1960’s. Secrets are revealed and identities are reinvented. As the final curtain falls the reader realises everyone is playing a role and moulding their identities to fit societal expectations.