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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It's the old girls who play the games,
This review is from: Girls at Play (Textbook Binding)
The opening of this novel does indeed show girls at play at a boarding school in East Africa, but it soon becomes clear that the title refers to the four teachers at the school -- the only white women in this remote region with nothing much to do after school hours. There's Miss Poole, the headmistress, a colonial born in Africa who does not care for England and continues to stay on even as independence for this African nation means lowered standards for whites like themselves. There's Bettyjean (B.J.) Lebow, a peace corps worker from San Diego, who struggles hard to match her fantasies of Africa with the realities. There's her room-mate, Pam Male. And finally Heather Monkhouse, who has had some sort of trouble in Nairobi and taken up teaching at this remote school. When finally two black men go out on a date with two of the teachers, a trail of tragedy engulfts each of the teachers' lives. The writing is uneven in patches (this was one of the author's early novels), but there are flashes of black humor. The funniest parts include scenes of the teachers taking turns in hosting group dinners at each of their homes although they cannot stand one another, each trying to outdo the other in being a rude and poor hostess.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Bush Education,
By
This review is from: Girls at Play (Mass Market Paperback)
Heather Monkhouse is the kind of white Anglo-African woman who uses powder to cover the lines on her face and wants nothing more out of life than pink gin, a parade of rich lovers, and a black or two to order around: "You know what I really want to be? A high-class call girl. Not a w----, you understand, but a paid girlfriend."
A bad fit for the teaching staff of a small backwater school, especially one run by the fragile, defensive Miss Poole, who lives in cat-infested squalor but insists on orderliness. When the two meet, it's hate at first sight. Soon they are throwing parties where the main objective is to embarrass one another before the other two guests, Miss Male (so obviously symbolic a name, it's almost the biggest laugh in the book) and B.J., a young American who believes she is really in Africa to help people and thus makes herself an easy victim. "Girls At Play" [1969] features Paul Theroux's always-brilliant writing about the ways of exotic nature, about the soughing of hylas and bats in the bush and the jacaranda and frangipani that fringe the schoolyard. The story doesn't work, however, either as allegory or satire, and certainly not as drama with its small cast of monodimensional players. Theroux's dyspeptic side gets much play with B.J., the most likable character but flawed as written by her desire to treat the Africans around her as people. Whether Theroux is criticizing her fuzzy-headed liberalism, the imperial condescension of Brits Heather and Miss Poole, or both, makes for much of the book's interest, but as it is never resolved in the storyline, it makes for something of a dead-end, too. Theroux uses his characters as a means of writing some pretty hairy things. "Africa was not mysterious, only disorganized, slow and dull" and "I don't believe in rape. There's no such thing." He has fun playing with the readers' sensibilities this way, but since he just leaves lines like those to linger, they come off as hollow rather than bracing sentiments. Ultimately, you get the feeling Theroux isn't taking his characters seriously not because they are outsiders in Africa but because they are women. That's troubling not because its politically incorrect (if you want politically correct fiction, don't read Theroux) but because it stops dead any real engagement you might have with the characters. If they are just a bunch of silly girls who look down on anyone with darker skin, why care about them? I didn't. And however strong his descriptive powers and unique his views, Theroux isn't a good enough novelist to make an interesting book with uninteresting characters.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Imaginative and Informative,
By Jus Me "Jus Me" (McHenry, IL) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Girls at Play (Paperback)
The book introduces surprising characters with equally surprising dynamics between characters. The book was entertaining as well as insightful.
The look at people in a country taking the first steps after colonization has ended seems accurate. Left on their own those newly independent peoples are like kids left without the babysitter who used to impose order. New freedoms allow for clashes between old customs and the old order that had been imposed by the colonists. The power vacuum leads to violence. The book also reveals the effect of the newly won independence on the characters who come to help and people that were born to the colonizers but are not among the original population of the new nation.
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