Customer Reviews

Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

How about something refreshingly original, amazingly creative, wholeheartedly unique? Or maybe something containing whimsically plausible characters encasing hearty penchants for the written word and appetites for poetically stimulating language usage? Look no further! Read Ella Minnow Pea for a divine, utterly addictive, and monumentally appealing perusing experience.

In the fictional island of Nollop, home to the late, great Nevin Nollop, inventor of the sentence, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," a pangram that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet, there's an uprising going on! Seems the monument depicting said sentence (in an effort to memorialize the citizens' esteemed island founder) is falling apart, letter by letter. High Council members determine this as a word from the great beyond, a way of communicating to us Nollop's wishes to eradicate that certain letter from use -- verbally or written. As an island full of people who use letter-writing and communication as an art form, these wishes could only spell 'demise.' If only there was a way to prove the tiles' falling as an act of faulty cement glue....

Ella Minnow Pea is an extraordinary book of letters from one citizen to the next that increase in hilarity and difficulty as each letter of the alphabet is increasingly banned from use. Mark Dunn is an extremely talented writer in my eyes, especially given this amazing task to expand his vocabulary beyond normal conversation. Have your Thesauruses handy -- Ella Minnow Pea will take you on quite an intellectual journey.

I am only half way through this book, which I must say reads very quickly, but I decided to have another look at the reviews of this book. After all, it was because of those reviews that I bought this book.

It concerns me, that those few readers who look beyond the humourous aspect of this book, still don't spend much time commenting upon the subtext - the loss of freedom. Not only are certain letters banned from use, but the high-minded governing Council, impose very strict punishments for anyone found using any of the banned letters, and a very strict adherence to those punishments, even to the extent of exiling nationals.

This novel shows how all too easy it is for innocent members of any group to be caught up in the fanaticism of a governing body, when that body believes that it is doing right. Look at any difficult political situation in the world today, and somewhere there is an element of fanaticism.

Whilst I am sure that Mark Dunn is very happy that people are enjoying the comic side to his novel, I guess he did not intend it to overshadow the deeper message.

This is a very enjoyable, very clever novel, but when you read it, don't forget that any of us could find ourselves in a similar situation very easily.

(Also, to the reviewer who suggested keeping a dictionary to hand, working out what is being said is probably supposed to be part of the enjoyment. You do not need a dictionary.)

Speak or write the letter "z", first offense-public reprimand, second offense-public flogging or the stockades, third offense-deportment from the island of Nollop. If you refuse to go, death is the punishment.

"Ella Minnow Pea" is quite possibly the most original book I have ever read. Mark Dunn's first novel is highly creative, insiteful, with a touch of political undercurrents. Written in the form of letter correspondences, it is a quick and entertaining read. As letters become outlawed, they do in fact drop from the book, not making it harder to read (as was my worry) but only adding to its charm. "Ella Minnow Pea" will even give you a new appreciation for that wonderful thing we call the alphabet, as well as put a smile on your face. So, find out the fate of the alphabet and the citizens of Nollop and read this book!

The poor reviews of this book reflect a sad tendency: the expectation that novels should tell us exactly what they are about so that we don't have to go to the trouble of figuring it out for ourselves - or, god forbid, that a book should have layered meanings, or leave things open to interpretation.
This book, however, is a finely written treatise in novel form (pun intended) about totalitarianism, repression, the effects of repression on society and what happens when complacent and fearful society doesn't fight back early and hard. A great gift for friends and family who like to think.

Creative? Imaginative? Entertaining? A tad absurd? You bet to all of the preceding. Playwright Mark Dunn has crafted his first novel, subtitled, "A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable."

It is a fable and a fantastic one that takes place today on the fictional island of Nollop, which is a stone's throw from North Carolina. The island is named in honor of the great Nevin Nollop who some 100 years ago penned "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," the revered phrase containing every letter in the alphabet. The more erudite among us know that a verse, phrase or sentence containing all the letters of the alphabet is a "panagram."

Nonetheless, the estimable Mr. Nollop is more than erudite to Nollopians; he is a hero and a statue in his honor sits in the town square. But, one day mysterious doings occur - letters of the alphabet begin to fall from the statue's inscription. First to drop is the Z. Then, oops, a Q followed by a J. And so it goes.

Respected for their sagacity, the Nollop Town Council immediately rules that the dropped letters are banned in both oral discourse and written communication. Forbidden, mind you, on pain of flogging or expulsion from the island. What to do?

It falls to Ella of the Minnow Pea family to discover a panagram using fewer letters in order to return the language they so love to all of Nollop.

The story is told in a series of letters, all of which are written adroitly and show just how ingenious one can be when it comes to communicating with fewer letters of the alphabet.

Wordsmiths will delight in this highly original tale, and all will smile wondering, "How in the world did Mark Dunn ever think of that?"

- Gail Cooke

This creative, intriguing novel follows the swift disintegration of an imaginary civilization when the letters on a statue they revere begin to fall, and their island government deems this a sign that they are to no longer use these letters in speech or writing.
The novel is written in the form of epistles, and as the story progresses we see the struggles of the correspondents to communicate without using the forbidden letters.
The book can be read as a cautionary tale, a political and/or religious allegory about censorship, idolatry, and the ease with which unwise laws can be passed, often unwittingly. The result of forbidding people to use certain letters of the alphabet is catastrophic; it results in physical punishment, exile, the breakup of families and loss of property -- even death.
Yet this novel is also a creative and entertaining read, uplifting and, in places, humorous. I highly recommend it to anyone who is fascinated with language.

Seriously, how could you resist the ridiculous, fanciful, fun setup for this book? Yes, as the tiles continue to fall, the forbidden letters indeed begin disappearing from the book itself, offering several laugh-out-loud substitutions and strategies.

Despite the ambitious premise, to be successful, this book must be more than a mere writer's exercise. It is. The characters work and the injustices will certainly raise your ire. The conclusion is satisfying. It's a quick, fun read you'll want to tell others about. Highly recommended.

I was enticed into reading this book by the jacket blurbs and other reviews here on Amazon. I loved the premise, and looked forward to an engaging tale peppered with some clever and unconventional wordplay. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with both the threadbare plot and the execution (which lapsed into a profusion of phonetic homophones just when the constraints were starting to get really interesting).

Even though I admire the author's pluck in both conceiving of and completing this project, two significant faults kept me from rating this quick read even at a relatively neutral three stars. First, the writing style of all of the correspondents is ridiculously baroque. The letters come off as more of an exercise in how to use a page and a well-worn thesaurus to express a sentiment that could be better conveyed in twenty words.

For the first dozen pages or so, I savored the idiosyncratic ornateness of the prose even though it was a bit tiresome to wade through. Given the central plot element of the story, I anticipated this was something of the "pride before the fall," and that the later letters would stand in marked contrast in tone as well as vocabulary.

This didn't really come to pass, though, and in hindsight it's clear why not. As more and more common words are stricken from the correspondents' vocabularies, increasingly convoluted contrivances are necessary to convey basic ideas. While it's fun in a NYT-crossword kind of way to see a "dusk-to-dawn" effort metamorphis into a "crepuscular-to-auroric" one, or to hear the worshipers of Nollop's famous pangram forced to refer to it obliquely as "the vulpine-canine sentence," seeing too many of these vocabulary variants on the page at once has the same effect as eating an entire box of rich chocolates. I lost my sweet tooth long before the author lost his, and instead of evolving from prolix to plain, the correspondents' rococo flourishes continue largely unabated.

The more damning flaw was that the "political satire" is incredibly thin. A richer or even a more subtle plot might have made this a four-star novel, but without any compelling characters or real dramatic tension, the eccentric wordplay is left to bear the entire weight of the work, and it's not up to the task. More substance beneath the style would have made this a much more enjoyable read.

This review will likely never earn a "yes" vote for its helpfulness, but nevertheless, I wanted to share that I absolutely adored this book. The premise was brilliant and I not once felt that the excution got stale. I don't know; maybe I'm just easier to amuse/impress than some, but this book really was one of the smartest things I've ever read.

This charming little tome is going on my list of ESSENTIAL books. I sat down one night to read the first chapter and looked up two and a half hours later when I finished the entire thing. If you like words and the way they fit together, you'll love this book. And if you like books written as letters (like "84, Charing Cross Road", "Griffin & Sabine", or even "The Jolly Postman"), you will adore this book. Even notes left on the kitchen table are charming in how they play into the story. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.