Paul Theroux has set his novel [Girls at Play] in East Africa, and the country is every bit as important as the characters. Its effect is pernicious; its principal weapon, dilapidation—both physical and spiritual. The action centres almost exclusively on a girls' school and the women who teach there….

Even in its smaller aspects, the novel is unremittingly depressing. The domestic guerrilla warfare waged between Miss Poole and Heather has not the slightest element of farce about it. Like their endless verbal bitchery, it is singlemindedly cruel and they take a good deal of pleasure in each other's discomfort. The Africans (disliked by most of the whites) are presented either as petty bureaucrats or as oafish, scrawny inhabitants of villages littered with cigarette wrappings and Coca-Cola bottles.

Rape and murder provide the novel with a climax, but they come as no surprise. Indeed, they seem inevitable; and...