"When I was six, my maiden aunt Eva gave me a first edition of "The World Is Round," by Gertrude Stein. Eva, who worked in a used bookstore, was the only bohemian in our family, and she revered Stein. I had never seen a book with pink pages and blue type, so I guessed that all first editions must be pink and blue. "I think you can read this yourself," Eva said. "It's long, but the words are simple.""
"On the third page, Rose cruelly punishes a little dog named Pépé, who isn't hers, though she pretends he is. (See above.) Pépé "had been taught never to do in a room what should be done outside," but, after he disobeys an order, Rose shuts him in a room where he is "so nervous being left all alone" that he does it. When he finally gets out, ashamed and traumatized, he bites her. I was terrified of dogs from then on."
A six-year-old receives a pink-paged, blue-typed first edition from a bohemian aunt who works in a used bookstore. The child struggles to read it but is drawn to its strange rules and imagery. The story centers on a girl named Rose who loves the color blue, fixates on round shapes, and wrestles with an obscure anxiety about being a little girl. Rose cruelly punishes a dog, Pépé, whose shame and trauma lead him to bite her, instilling a lasting canine fear in the narrator. Rose's crying, singing to fend off phobias, and an absurd attempt to sit atop a mountain with a blue chair intensify the narrator's unease and gender curiosity.
Read at The New Yorker
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