Girls At Play By Paul Theroux

All Books are second hand
Paul Theroux
9780140054958

When he was in Uganda he met and became friends with V.S. Naipaul (at least for a while) and also he met his first wife, Anne Castle, a Brit, who was a secondary school teacher in an upcountry Kenya girl's school.

I mention that because Girls at Play is set in a remote Kenya girls' school and focuses on four women. A Miss Poole, the Headmistress, who was born in Africa and can't live anywhere else. Heather Monkhouse, who escapes the dull life of London, for Africa. Another young, wealthy British woman, and Bettyjean LebowB.J. to her friendswho is a Peace Corps Volunteer from San Diego and who, Theroux writes, "has difficulty reconciling her Hollywood fantasies of Africa with her liberal outlook."