The Boys in the Boarding House

Seasoned short story writer Geradine Maayo's gallery of portraits, old and new, most recently collected in The Boys in the Boarding House continue to unnerve the reader, even those who, like this one, have read her short stories with uncommon interest for the several decades of an enviable career. Familiarity does not guarantee a lessening of the initial shock of meeting and getting to know the souls in torment laid bare for us by this amorist--pitilessly, but with painstaking care. The martyrs to love and passion that we find in these pages seem to be incarnated contradictions of their avowed beliefs, living on with the pain these continuing traumas inflict on the psyche-indeed, often achieving between these contrary elements an uneasy but permanent détente. Achievers they are, in this odd, peculiar fashion of being living oxymorons. - Partial review by Francis C. Macansantos (MORE INSIDE) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A winner of the National Focus Literary Awards (first prize Fiction Category, 1977, and Special Award for the Essay, 1983), GERALDINE C. MAAYO has produced two collections of fiction: The Photographs and Other Stories (1981) and A Quality of Sadness (1987), both published by New Day Publishers. A story from the first collection was included in a German anthology titled Women from the Philippines (1987). First published in the PHILIPPINES FREE PRESS in 1972, most of her stories appeared in national magazines like MIDWEEK, FINA, MR. and MS. and EXPRESSWEEK. She attended the Silliman Writers' Summer Workshop in 1979. A holder of a bachelor's degree major in English and Comparative Literature from the University of the Philippines, she obtained her Masters in Public Administration major in Organization and Management and her Doctorate in Public Administration from the UP College of Public Administration. She spent most of her working life in the academe teaching graduate courses in Organization and Management, Organizational Behavior, Organization and Human Resource Development. She also conducted seminars (public and in-house) on Leadership, Problem-Solving and Decision-Making, and Supervisory Skills Development. She recently retired as Associate Professor in Industrial Relations from the University of the Philippines after 34 years. She had taught graduate school courses at UP Baguio, UP Clark Air Base, UP Pampanga, UP Olongapo Extension Program. Outside the university, she taught HRD in the doctoral program of the De La Salle University's Graduate School of Business and Economics as well as the Doctor of Management Program of the General Staff College in Fort Bonifacio, in consortium with the Philippine Christian University. Dr. Maayo has edited Organizational Behavior: a Book of Cases (New Day, (MORE INSIDE)