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If there's one type of book that I can always guarantee I will love, it is a novel comprising of letters between correspondents: I cite examples such as 84 Charing Cross Road, The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel society, Lady Susan. Thus, I was delighted to receive Ella Minnow Pea, a novel without letters by Mark Dunn, as a mystery Christmas present from my brother-in-law. He couldn't have chosen better for me.
The main characters involved in the book are Ella - an almost-18 year old girl living on the fictitious island of Nollop which is off the coat of Carolina - who corresponds with her cousin Tassie, a year older, who lives at the other end of the island to her. The island is named after Nevin Nollop, born there, the supposed writer of the pangram beloved of typist-students, The Quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The island holds him in a reverence and his famous phrase is displayed in letters of stone in the town on the island. Nollop seems to be stuck in a time-warp,yet I get the feeling the book is set in the present. What happens is, as we discover through Tassie and Ella's correspondence and also occasionally through the missives of their mothers, Ella's father or Nate Warren, a scholar and a few others, is that when the letter Z drops off and falls to the ground broken, the council decide to elevate Nevin Nollop (who built the epitaph 100 years ago) to divine status and decide this must mean that Nollop, the eloquent, must surely mean that we must reinvent and explore our language more by banning use of the letter Z in all forms of communication: So no more zooming or buzzing, whizzing or fizzing, dozing or lazing and certainly no visits to zoological gardens or conversations with people called Zoe! The punishments will be public flogging or the stocks and the 3rd offence results in banishment. Unfortunately, then the letter Q drops off and one by one, the letters they doth tumble! Ella and Tassie's correspondence becomes more interesting as they avoid the banned latters, creatively avoiding them and become lipograms.
The situation becomes more ludicrous, chaotic and yet chilling as time goes on and yet there is a gentle humour, fun and a heart to this book. I learnt to love Ella and Tassie and their parents and their development. At times, you wanted to shout at the Council for the sheer idiocy of their decisions but that wouldn't make an interesting book had they been reasonable people...
The final solution depends on being able to find an alternative shorter pangram to topple Nollop from his deistic status. I confess to sitting with a pen for ages trying to work out my own pangram (and remember doing this in Year 9 English)
It is a book of sheer delight for a logophile such as myself. Full of eloquent, elaborate and wide-ranging vocabulary as Ella and Tassie try to find ways to circumvent banned letters through curious and flowery synonyms, I felt I learnt a lot whilst feeling more anxious as the events of the book unfold. I loved the old-fashioned and simple life/feel to the setting and the mystery and sense of wondering what the great denouement would be. Definitely a book I recommend to you.
I'd love to know if you have read it at all?
xx
Oh and for your delectation, here is a great blog post on Pangrams.
