Customer Reviews

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

'Ella Minnow Pea' is a delightfully diverting novel filled with wit and imagination. Its lovingly crafted structure is a real breath of fresh air -- one would be hard pressed to find another book like it out there. One must admire Mark Dunn not only for his lively imagination but for his awe-inspiring power over words. It is fun to see how he manages to continue telling his story while avoiding use of a growing number of letters in the alphabet. Never once does his prose sound forced or simple, even after he must resort to using his remaining letters to phonetically sound out his words. The plot (citizens on an island off the coast of the US rebel after their government begins restricting their use of the alphabet) could have easily been silly, cliched and like a poor man's 'Animal Farm' but instead forges out its own solid identity and endears itself to the reader through its inventiveness and wit. One can't help but enjoy 'Ella Minnow Pea'. I read it in one afternoon and my only complaint is that it had to end.

I LOVED this book. I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked it up, and then I just couldn't put it down. I was reading passages to my husband and although he hates it when I do that, I couldn't resist. When I finished it, I went to the Amazon web page and ordered a copy for my son and my sister-in-law. I then put the book on my shelves that I have reserved for the books to read again. As a matter of fact, I have the paperback edition, I think I am going to need the hardback!
This book should be put on reading lists at high schools and colleges, it is that good. The discussions it could start, the ideas and thoughts it could open to so many people...enough, just take my word for it, this is a MUST read book.
By the way, I found that I needed a dictionary for the book and towards the end, I found it was much easier to read the letters out loud (not to my husband, just for me).Reading the letters out loud helped me understand them, so keep that in mind. What a fun, important book!

This is a challenging experiment in word play written entirely in letter (epistle) format. Plot-wise, as the letters of the alphabet disappear from the monument, the citizens are ordered to stop using them -- in writing OR in speech. (The speech part fails me -- you don't use letters in speech unless you spell aloud. But for the sake of the story, it increases the frustrating need to comunicate.) I would compare the plot to that of "The Emperor Has No Clothes" -- that is, what's real and what isn't, and who is willing to stand up and admit it? ELLA MINNOW PEA becomes an interesting look at what a fanatic oligarchy can do to a society if the pople don't fight back.

Because this was sold as a play on words, I thought it was going to be much more fun. But quite frankly it was pretty heavy plodding in the beginning. I do applaud the author for his attempt at word play, but I wish he'd been more consistent. For example, at one point, character Mittie decides she's going to make up for the loss of some letters by overusing the others ("Robbed of two letters, I now chooooose to overuuuuse the twenty-four which remaaaain"), but then she never does again. Had she kept that up, it would have been fun and something to set her apart. There was otherwise nothing distinguishing these "characters."

I initially felt that the writing was terribly awkward -- why does the author make it sound as if the people had swallowed a thesaurus and spewed it forth in their unreal letters to each other? But a couple of days later, as the story was still swimming in my head, I realized, no -- the beginning establishes how much the people cherish the words. They play with them, eat, sleep, and practically bathe in them, making their loss even more painful. And if they did NOT have such a familiarity with the use of alternate words, they couldn't have continued communicating as long as they did. They had to leave their home, their country, because they couldn't give up their ability to communicate. An interesting read that keeps coming back to my mind. (Extra fun: the new names for the months, subtly shown at the top of each letter.)

The editorial summary doesn't mention the fact that the inhabitants of Nollop cherish the written word. They rejoice in felicitous turns of phrase, the obscure yet precisely appropriate word, the expressive distinctiveness of individual voice. In letters (they eschew the telephone) they tend to sound vaguely Victorian, but they are no linguistic stiffs; they embrace neologisms, word play and above all, wit and vigor in writing.

So it is all the more poignant when Nollop's Council begins to forbid the use of first one, then more letters, in writing or speech, upon pain of banishment. The book is mostly about the inhabitant's reactions to these ever-tightening restrictions. At first they are puzzled, dismissive or resigned. Some even find it humorous. But as the inhabitants begin to be banished from the island, they become more alarmed (though some zealots begin to inform on their neighbors.) One begins to understand just how soul-crushing such restrictions on personal expression can be.

Ella is a particularly intelligent and spirited girl. She ends up being nearly the only inhabitant of the island, other than the Council, now revealed to be a self-serving bunch of autocrats. To watch Ella reduced in her fury and despair to nearly wordless moaning is especially poignant.

The book is certainly funny. I especially enjoyed watching the names of the days and months change, ultimately beyond recognition, to avoid using the forbidden letters.

But though it doesn't belabor the point, the book is ultimately a cautionary about clinging too zealously to the myths and stories of one's past, and how gradually and insidiously any restrictions on personal freedoms can destroy a community.

It is quite short. I read it in an afternoon.

What a strange,imaginative, and creative reading experience!A fable told in letters, Mark Dunn's book shows us the sometimes hilarious and more often sad results of censorship as the island of Nollop,begins to lose their alphabet. Named after Nevin Nollop who phrased the line: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, the council of the island feel he's speaking to them from the dead when the letters of the phrase begin to fall off a memorial statue of him in the town square. They then ban the falling letters from the alpahabet and so they also disappear from the pages of the book causing a creative bit of wordplay as more letters drop. Both fun and frustrating the book can be digested in one wordful sitting as the heroine tries to save the town. A really inventive and fun read!

This is not only laugh out-loud funny and adorable, it could be a very valuable teaching tool. It holds the mirror up to so many human faults, failures, fears, strengths and beliefs. As another reviewer said, I don't want to ruin it for others. It's a quick read and so worth time time.

Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea has got a huge amount of admiring notice -- you need only look at the other reviews here! It's called "a novel in letters", which is a pun -- it is indeed composed of letters (epistles), but it is also concerned with letters (graphemes). The story is set on Nollop, a fictional island off the coast of South Carolina, supposedly named after Nevin Nollop, the man who composed the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". When letters begin to drop off the statue of Nollop, the rulers of the island decide to outlaw the use of the fallen letters.

Ella Minnow Pea (think LMNOP) is an 18 year old girl living on Nollop. She, along with her mother and father, and her cousin Tassie and Tassie's mother, become resistors to the rulers' draconian laws against using missing letters -- laws which become more of a concern as more letters fall. The conceit of the novel is that as letters fall off the sign, each chapter (or series of "epistles") also is written without the outlawed letters. Eventually, the only hope for the resistance is to find a sentence even shorter than "The quick brown fox ..." that uses all 26 letters.

In the end I was somewhat disappointed. It's amusing enough, and resolved nicely enough, but I was simply and totally unconvinced by the villains. They seem cartoons to me, beyond any possible belief, and I just couldn't emotionally engage with the book. Also, the heroines, Ella and Tassie, never really came alive for me. In the final analysis, the book seems more clever than true.

You know, George Orwell's "Animal Farm" is a classic, but Mark Dunn may just have presented a new little allegory to rival Orwell's.
The concept of an island nation, small, intimate, loving, facing division at the hands of a dead founder's sacred strip, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog", is no more incredible than the crazy world in which we now live with unreasoning bureaucracies gone mad in the sake of conservative preservation.
Dunn may be best known as a playwright, but this little book and his "Welcome to Higby" just cinch him as a darn talented and creative writer.
It doesn't always take a thick book to get the message over.

What a great little gem this book is. Told through letters between the characters, the text gradually loses bits of the alphabet until Dunn must be extremely creative in word choice and spelling. Ella Minnow Pea is an easy read and very funny, but it also contains some food for thought on fanaticism and conformity, as well as the function of language as a tool for civilization. While the message is evident, it is thankfully not beaten to death in that "look at me! I'm intellectual!" way.

This is one of those books that puts a smile on your face as you're reading because it's so clever in parts, and you'll be thinking about the implications long after you've finished.

Ella Minnow Pea is a triumph! While I dislike calling it "experimental fiction" - this usually implies style over substance from which this novel did not suffer - this novel is a prime example of what an author can create when abandoning traditional novel structure. Not only does Dunn draw the reader in through his absorbing story, but also through the challenge he set for himself - to tell a story using a rapidly disappearing alphabet.

Ella Minnow Pea is a quick but satisfying, absorbing read. Not only is it a satire about the world in which we live but its also a celebration of language. So, you're thinking all this sounds rather boring? Think again.