The Gentle Order of Girls And Boys: Four Stories

by Dao Strom

In an evocative portrait of the rites of female passage, a collection of short fiction by the author of Grass Roof, Tin Roof journeys from girlhood and young womanhood to marriage and motherhood, capturing the lives of four young women dealing with the challenges of romance and relationships at different stages in their individual lives.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

341 pages, Hardcover

First published April 4, 2006

About the author

Dao Strom is the author of Grass Roof, Tin Roof and The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys. She is also a writer of songs; she writes and records as The Sea and The Mother.

The New Yorker praised Strom's story collection,The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys, as being "quietly beautiful...hip without being ironic."

Her latest work is a hybrid literary/music/art project, an experimental memoir, We Were Meant To Be A Gentle People, accompanied by an album, East/West. This project received a 2014 RACC Grant and a 2013 Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship.

Previously, she has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, a James Michener Fellowship and the Nelson Algren Award, among other recognitions. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop.

Dao Strom was born in Vietnam and grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California. She lives in Portland, OR.

Reviews

[Carrie]

I liked this book a lot. It's a slow and insightful read. There are some very surreal moments too but they fit, they are real surreal moments, if that makes any sense. The stories are told in four loosley related chapters each featuring a woman as the main character. Here's an example of some text I though was nice.

"On that night Ping came to borrow her history notes and lay stretched out on her couch, staring at the ceiling, as he spoke about things like the underwear he had coveted, and the sadness of sex, and his own disadvantages as an Asian male, and his Catholic guilt; all the while she watched him and listened while privately she was criticizing his shoes in the same light as she did his candor, his painful-to-watch innocence, his unfortunate haircut; and all the while she was not realizing – was not understanding – that when someone lies on his back before you like that and speaks toward the ceiling, that he is entreating you with some things and that he might not at the time quite recognize what is happening, and what then is your responsibility, if you do recognize it but you keep throwing flowers instead of stones? Who is she really betraying? It is a biblical parable she read once that she is thinking of now, about an alleged heretic in Jerusalem who was being stoned by a mob and how once man in the mob, not wanting to admit he knows the heretic and not wanting either to be spotted throwing nothing, thus throws a flower instead of a stone.
Flowers instead of stones, she thinks, isn’t that just how some girls are?"

[Odessa]

I read this title back in the time when it was released so it surely has been a while. Since I found the author and this book amazing, I also read her first novel, Grass Roof...

As it turned out, this was a gem and the novel of the year--or way more-- to me. Then how come was it so underrepresented that it did not even see its paperback version? Or did it and only I did not know?

Update
It seems this essay

https://www.guernicamag.com/features/...

that I stumbled into with joy might answer the question that I set a while back.

[Liz]

Five stories...all very true to life, with lovely characters and a perfect feeling of stark honesty in their thoughts and actions...

[A.L. DeLeon]

Dao does a great job of giving us a glimpse into the thoughts and interactions women have at various stages of their lives in The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys, especially their interactions with boys and men. But it’s a slow read and there’s more internal character conflict than there is outer external conflict to drive the plot in each short story.

There is one passage close to the end of the book that will remain with me for years. It ends with the phrase, “I have tried to look at you with love”. I won’t spoil the book for those that wish to read it and tell you why that is significant, but for those who have or will read it, I suspect you’ll find that passage just as fitting as I did.

[Kelly Madewell]

Disappointing. Lots and lots of details that didn't add up to anything. Bland characters. Kept expecting some sort of plot. I'm not overly interested in action or plot in writing, but it seems like a 'story' needs some sort of rise and fall, doesn't it? None found here. Also seemed like the author didn't know how to end any of the stories so she ended each with a vague--'what do YOU think it means?'--kind of line. Lazy. Reading bad books is nearly as annoying to me as paying money for bad food.

[Courtney]

The four stories weren't overly engaging but nice to read fiction from a Vietnamese-American perspective. The story entitled "Neighbors" was probably the most thought provoking, deals with complacency.

[Richard Hintz]

New Yorker 19 Jun 2006