Ella Minnow Pea ⭑⭑⭑
Genre: Epistolary Fiction
US Publication: October 1, 2001
Print: 208 pages
Audio: N/A
Confetti Rating: 3 stars
REVIEW:
Get this - Ella Minnow Pea is “a novel in letters,” and there is a clever double meaning there.
The story unfolds in the epistolary format, so the plot moves along through letters exchanged by the characters.
It is "progressively lipogrammatic.” As you read along, more and more letters of the alphabet are excluded from the characters' writings. With each disappearing letter, the words become increasingly phonetically or creatively spelled. “You” becomes “ewe.” “Family” becomes “phamilee.”
If that all sounds very meta, it is. Written in 2001, Ella Minnow Pea has become somewhat of a modern classic given the novelty of its structure along with its not-so-subtle themes of totalitarianism, censorship, and freedom of speech. You see, the fictional island’s government bans the use of various letters and inflicts punishment on citizens for each infraction.
Fun, huh? For lovers of linguistics it very well may be. Unfortunately, the storyline itself is boring as phuk.
I’m glad to have finally picked up Ella Minnow Pea since it is so unique, but overall it struck me as a novel that was more fun for the author to write than for people to read.
PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:
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