Ella Minnow Pea

Tonight, our book club discussed Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea. The book is an epistolary novel, as the plot is divulged through a series of letters between the book's namesake and a variety of people on the island nation of Nollop, located off the coast of South Carolina. Central to this community is the vitality of language--the letters are comprised of sophisticated language and serve as the primary means of communication between members of the populace since other technology is unreliable.

This civil little society is rudely awakened, though, when letters begin to fall from the epigraph on the statue of Mr. Nollop, founder of the society and mastermind of the pangram, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." (Pangrams require the use of all 26 letters of the alphabet in one sentence. We enjoyed trying to devise our own tonight to share with each other. Mine: "My quest: catch jolly zephyrs to exhibit for vast knowledge." Others were better.) In the book, those in charge deem the droppage of letters as a sign from Mr. Nollop from beyond the grave that social life should continue without the use of the fallen letters. So, they first hold a party for the z, the first letter to be outlawed from spoken or written expression. Life quickly goes downhill as other letters follow the course of z, and with the council's refusal to hear sense, Nollopians soon find themselves kicked off the island or running to escape the tyranny of this totalitarian regime who is slowly siphoning away their pride and sole means of communication.

While the premise is provoking, the story itself leaves the plot and characters undeveloped, a flaw perhaps contributed to by the epistolary format. However, the author is certainly clever--as each letter successively falls from the statue, so too, his own writing must reflect the absence of the letters, leading to some creative phrasing and word usage. I think he makes up a few of his words, splicing roots and suffixes together to create meaning, and by the end of the book, reading becomes more like playing Mad Gab as the council deems phonetic spellings appropriate for illicit letters (thus, "ph" suffixes for the letter "f" and "off" becomes "oph"). As a result, it is easiest to read the text aloud in order to comprehend more quickly, something likely to get a few stares if you are reading that part, as I was, out in public.

Overall, a fun little read. Clever, literary, definitely recommended for the wordsmith. However, I enjoyed Eyre Affair much more for overall quality that includes wit, plot, and a little more character development. 3 of 5 stars.