The Stone Angel.
It's a miserable story about a dying old woman regretting all her life choices. It's also required reading in Canadian high schools because the author is Canadian.
And then, on top of all that, my teacher absolutely insisted that its only major theme was "hope" and docked marks for having any other interpretation.
My wife is from an Eastern European country, and whenever we visit her folks I have a similar experience. Every single restaurant reeks of smoke, and there is apparently no political appetite to change that.