Set on Africa's Gold Coast during the 1930s and 1940s, Marilyn Heward Mills's Cloth Girl depicts a world where colonial customs and local superstitions entwine. Matilda is only 14 when the middle-aged Robert Bannerman sets eyes on her and decides to make her his wife. A Cambridge-educated lawyer, he is already married - to the uptight and defensive Julie - but Matilda's family deems it a good match and the union goes ahead.
Meanwhile Audrey Turton, an Englishwoman, is sinking into a gin-soaked depression, unable to adjust to the heat and the long, empty days of life as a colonial official's wife. Inevitably, these two women are thrown together - Matilda is sent to Audrey for English lessons - and Heward Mills deftly captures the ironic pity each feels for the other's situation.
Written with fluency and confidence, this is an impressive debut. But the characterisation can be simplistic: Julie is never more than a shrill villain. Unstable Audrey is the most interesting character, yet her role is curtailed two-thirds of the way through. After this, Cloth Girl loses its way, and a series of rather convenient twists brings things to a close. Where Heward Mills succeeds is in capturing life in Ghana as it moved towards independence.
