I don't if it was such a great idea to recommend any of those stories, now that I am home and can glance through them. The underlying theme that unites them in my mind is the cultivation of a romantic sensibility, which isn't the same as a love story---where the love story evokes the larger world of the senses, the dreams of youth, the intense struggles with feelings that have no reality beyond the heart, the imagination, and the arts. All good stuff, but perhaps only in retrospect, looking back at youth, but not actually being young any more. Kind of a judgment call. They might be too grown-up in the intellectual sense. They are of course extremely dark but I seem to remember them as also extremely beautiful.
There is also a problem with gender in the sense that masculinity and femininity are merged in a diffused way that maybe only the very young (and lucky) experience. And, the writing even in translation is painfully exquisite. Gide in particular was in full mastery and constructed plots, themes, and characters to intertwine in an very precise and tight way---maybe tedious to some---but an instructive revelation for anyone interested in learning to write. (My hidden agenda is to convert everyone to the arts.)
I don't know. Thinking about K, I wonder maybe she might like extremely masculine and adventurous stories, like Jack London, To Light a Fire... or some of Steinbeck's short stories, or Hemingway. Just cause she's a girl...doesn't mean everything is pink and ribbons. (Are there still lego trucks on the floor?) The point is to get her back to enjoying a good story, right? I mean, O-land isn't a romantic's best town...
Maybe science fiction, which is where I was at twelve.
(Please imagine me smiling with sympathy...)
CG