Such a Good Education — France Theoret

Such a Good Education traces the formative teenage years of Evelyne, a girl growing up in 1950s Montreal. Born into a culturally destitute environment, raised in an economically disadvantaged family, and taught at a traditional Catholic day school, her mother proudly asserts that all of this adds up to 'une belle education.' When Evelyne ends up a barmaid in a hotel her parents acquire at the edge of the city, she discovers just how wrong her mother is, and how much suffering is enabled by silence and denial. Originally published in 2006, Such a Good Education is a scathing critique of traditional values, exposing the ignorance and poverty that troubled many French Canadian families during the mid-twentieth century.