| Girls At Play | |
| Author: | Paul Theroux |
| Language: | English |
| Publisher: | Houghton Mifflin (US) The Bodley Head (UK) |
| Pub Date: | 1969 |
Girls At Play is the third novel[1] by American author Paul Theroux published in 1969 by Houghton Mifflin in the US and by The Bodley Head in the UK. It is set in 1967 in a girls school in Kenya (though throughout it is only referred to as being in East Africa).
Theroux's first wife taught at a girls' school in upcountry Kenya. He writes an Author Note: "In Kenya, two hundred miles from Nairobi, on the Kampala Road, there is a high cool place which is still called by some 'the White Highlands'. My wife tells me there is a girls’ school there, but I have never seen it, and neither has she...The school and all the girls in this book are fiction."[1]
40-year-old Miss Poole returned to East Africa after spending an unhappy eight years in London following an attack at her family's farm in East Africa. She is now the headmistress of a girls school in the bush, having only cats as her company. English woman Heather Monkhouse having left her previous teaching post in Nairobi arrives, accompanied by her large dog Rufus. Heather thought she was going to teach domestic science but Miss Poole expects her to teach English and Drama. Heather, Miss Poole, Billie Jean (B.J.) from San Diego and Pamela Male a biology teacher met weekly for dinner, rotating meals between them, Heather and Miss Poole vying to make their evenings as unpleasant as possible. The feud between them worsens as B.J. and Male watch. Their respective servants are pulled into the dispute and then leave. Miss Poole then becomes ill as Heather manages the school much to Miss Poole's dismay. Heather's reason for leaving her previous school is not revealed until the end of the novel.