A choral novel that celebrates ecology, feminism and occult knowledge.
A vast boarding school in the forest. Through the slabs grows a resilient vegetation, with roots that forget nothing and nobody. Ancient knowledge is heard on the walls. The school is attended by girls with names that seem to come from a spicile: Ariandre, Diane, Laure, Annette and others, some older, some gone, as well as by the teachers and Dame Françoise in the kitchen. And Dame Angoisse, the concierge.
They learn algebra and vocabulary, but some also know the forest. Some talk too much, others not at all. Lady Anne has a bad fall. Colette and Corinne exchange touches. Ariandre writes.
École pour filles is a dense choral work, narrated in a rich and furiously free language, a novel that smells of damp stone corridors, garden plants, the whipping fir tree and the river that carries away.
