Mark Dunn

a novel in letters

Ella Minnow Pea

taylor miles hopkins

It is not a miracle. It is an accident. Pure happenstance.

avarni

any of us could have come up with such a sentence. We are, when it comes right down to it, all of us: mere monkeys at typewriters.

a progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable

(Bre)anne✨

And this is why I venture to tell you the truth of its genesis, risking, of course, a strict interpretation of your challenge. I venture so, for this reason, Mr. Lyttle: any of us could have come up with such a sentence. We are, when it comes right down to it, all of us: mere monkeys at typewriters. Like Nollop. Nollop, low order primate elevated to high order ecclesiastical primate, elevated still further in these darkest last days to ultimate prime A grade superior being. For doing that which my father did without thinking. Think about it.

Is this was Mr. Nollop woot want? On this, we are not sertin. Howepher, ewe may write to one another in this manner, ontil we rool otherwise.

Let us remember, as well, that Nollop was an imbecile. 

“…it is the Council’s earnest conviction that there is no other Supreme Being but Almighty Nollop. None whatsoever. Praise Nollop. Nollop eternal.”

“And yet, deep inside,” she tells me, “I am angry and rebellious.” “In my head,” she tells me, “I am reciting what I recall of my niece’s last letter, allowing the illegal words to baste and crisp. I cook the words, serve them up, devour them greedily. In the sanctuary of my thoughts, I am a fearless renegade. Yet in the company of the children I cringe and cower in a most depreciating way.”

Fun literary concept! Feels like the story comes secondary to this novelty, which is not unexpected but I hoped this would overcome it. I think full books structured through letters just aren’t my favorite as they’re often not as exploratory and remain more surface-level. For example, lots of letter between people in the same household just isn’t believable! This, along with all very formal voices, just wasn’t hitting the mark for me.

Enjoyable, silly, quick read. Not revolutionary, but a worthwhile wordplay + warning on religious fanaticism. 

Fun literary concept! Feels like the story comes secondary to this novelty, which is not unexpected but I hoped this would overcome it. I think full books structured through letters just aren’t my favorite as they’re often not as exploratory and remain more surface-level. For example, lots of letter between people in the same household just isn’t believable! This, along with all very formal voices, just wasn’t hitting the mark for me.

Enjoyable, silly, quick read. Not revolutionary, but a worthwhile wordplay + warning on religious fanaticism. 

Yes, I have stayed up to an ungodly hour to finish this book - I could not bear to put it down. My reading experience of Ella Minnow Pea has been full of nothing but pure delight. This is a work of art; linguistic porn. Language is a construct we take for granted. Communication is an innate, vital need. What happens when you take away the safety net? On second thought, what happens when you take away any of the safety nets that we so mindlessly assume are constant and everlasting?

Ps: if the events of this tale were to ever happen to us, please see to it that I am swiftly dispatched - I have not the strength of LMNOP.

Lily Cooper

Yes, I have stayed up to an ungodly hour to finish this book - I could not bear to put it down. My reading experience of Ella Minnow Pea has been full of nothing but pure delight. This is a work of art; linguistic porn. Language is a construct we take for granted. Communication is an innate, vital need. What happens when you take away the safety net? On second thought, what happens when you take away any of the safety nets that we so mindlessly assume are constant and everlasting?

Ps: if the events of this tale were to ever happen to us, please see to it that I am swiftly dispatched - I have not the strength of LMNOP.

Monicap

That was the most delightful reading experience I've ever had the joy to realize.

Yeah, this shit is hard.

verrrrrry interesting and verrrrrry sakit kepala to read when it comes to the last few pages. as a non-native speaker, it's so interesting to decipher those letters replacement just to make sense of the whole sentence. i had to pronounce some words over and over again just to make sense of the sound. 

a good book for those who are into epistolary and morphology. 

not the ending that i expected but a great reading experience overall!

verrrrrry interesting and verrrrrry sakit kepala to read when it comes to the last few pages. as a non-native speaker, it's so interesting to decipher those letters replacement just to make sense of the whole sentence. i had to pronounce some words over and over again just to make sense of the sound. 

a good book for those who are into epistolary and morphology. 

not the ending that i expected but a great reading experience overall!

An epistolary novel set on a fictional island off the South Carolina coastline, 'Ella Minnow Pea' brings readers to the hometown of Nevin Nollop, inventor of the pangram 'The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog'. Deified for his achievement in life, Nevin has been honored in death with a monument featuring his famous phrase. One day, however, the letter 'Z' falls from the monument, and some of the islanders interpret the missing tile as a message from beyond the grave. The letter 'Z' is banned from use. On an island where the residents pride them-selves on their love of language, this is seen as a tragedy. They are still reeling from the shock when another tile falls. And then another... In his charming debut, first published in 2001, Mark Dunn took readers on a journey through the eyes of Ella Minnow Pea, a young woman forced to create another clever turn of phrase in order to save the islanders’ beloved language.

Laura Mauler

** spoiler alert **
           No vowels fell until the book was 83% done, and even then it was a U. What a cop-out.

a surprisingly relevant epistolary novel about the dangers of linguistic prescriptivism and religious fanaticism.  

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 phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, “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.

A Novel in L:etter

Katherine Yang

Highly inventive and passionate. The relief inspired at the culminating liberation of the Nollopians' vocabulary is a powerful reminder of the joy of language and expression. Wonderfully experimental.

Elizabeth Clark 

i was not expecting the book to turn as sad as it became at some points—caught me off-guard because i was expecting a light read, and in a way it was an easy, quick enough read; but still one that deals with issues that have only become increasingly relevant since the year this was published in a way that emphasizes the importance of humanity, hope and courage. of not giving up even in the darkest hours. 

fira

Emelie

WOW. This book was SO good! Great use of letters as we know them.

TW to be added later

WOW. This book was SO good! Great use of letters as we know them.

cheyenne 

definitely a fun, cute little book! good if you’re looking for a fast little read! it only took me two hours! ❤️

Katherine Marie Elizabeth

THIS BOOK! Everyone needs to read this book. It is, in my opinion, the greatest work that explores the English language and how far we as a people are willing to go to keep our words, and thus ourselves, no matter who tries to censor us. The ending was phenomenal and even better than I expected. I couldn’t stop reading it. It’s perfect.

Varun R Gupta

Being a fan of Georges Perec's "A Void", this book was a great short read. Talks about societal issues like censorship and totalitarianism, while also being lipogrammatic. The ending was a bit weird, but overall, fun for a single session read.

Charlie Winchester 

An interesting social commentary with language.

Sarah Escorsa

I actually started reading this book this morning and didn't put it down until I finished it;) This was quite an enjoyable, clever little book although I didn't find it as enchanting as James Thurber's The Wonderful O. Still it is a lovely read:)

Jayla Yez

This was a super interesting book. I found it harder to connect with the characters since it was written with letters that the different characters would send each other (although I understand why this method was used). Near the end I found it harder to read since there were so few letters able to be used it looked like a child had written it. This novel really made me look at the different lettered being used and think about how I use such a wide variety of letters everyday.

Nadia Borgdorff

Love it. Sometimes hard for non-native English speakers because the characters/author have/has to use so many synonyms, but overall very enjoyable!

Katto

The writing is phenomenal! The author really knows how to work with words and synonyms.
This was a lot sadder and more serious than I expected but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Femke

** spoiler alert **
           Unique and intriguing format. The last chapters/letters were hard to read through because of the phonetic spelling, but it was definitely worth it.

Miriam Bauer

I think the idea behind it is very clever and I love the playing with language. However, the story is a bit silly at times and I wasn't very invested in the characters. Usually I'm not a fan of epistolary novels, yet it works brilliantly in this case. Overall enjoyed it.

Christina

Intelligent in its simple style and rather fascinating. 
That plus, a read easily finished in one sitting? 
This word nerd is happy. 🥰

Ella Minnow Pea a novel in letters

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