Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn.
Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.
*pangram: a sentence or phrase that includes all the letters of the alphabet
- "Ella Minnow Pea is the first political satire of the 21st century, and, appropriately, it's a kinder, gentler satire. (...) Dunn has produced something between a crossword puzzle and a witty political allegory. (...) There's the whiff of a classic about Ella Minnow Pea. It's lighter than those high-school standards 1984 or Brave New World, but even when only LMNOP remain, it's touched by sweetness." - Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor
- "We slowly conclude that without language, without culture -- the two are inextricably bound -- existence itself is at stake. And we forget that the novel is only playful. Soon we see that a void, a blankness, awaits us." - Irving Malin, Review of Contemporary Fiction
- "Dunn obviously spent significant energy and creativity to write without certain letters, and there are several nice turns of phrase in the book. As a novel, though, Ella Minnow Pea reads like a literary StairMaster -- a decent workout, but don't expect to go anywhere." - Mark Luce, San Francisco Chronicle
- "As will be apparent, Dunn’s book is really a fairy story about intolerance and mass hysteria, in the form of a technical exercise. It is a sweet-natured piece (.....) But compared to Perec, Ella Minnow Pea is as simple as ABC." - Kevin Jackson, The Spectator
- "As freedom of expression becomes increasingly problematic, one begins to search for Dunn's satirical target. And it is hard to identify, for this is pure allegory. Animal Farm, written for a simpler ideological world, was easy. But are we talking about religious fundamentalism here (a latter-day Tale of a Tub) ? The collapse of literacy ? Or are we allegorising allegory? Who knows? Perhaps Dunn is lambasting evil men who would suppress lipograms." - Giles Coren, The Times
