Mark Dunn's obsessively written "novel in letters" does spectacular double time as an amusing, whimsical writing experiment and a timely cautionary tale. Set on the fictional island of Nollop (just off the coast of South Carolina), named for Nevin Nollop, author of the famous "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" sentence which has catapulted him into an almost Godlike status for the locals, the titular Ella, her cousin Tassie, and their families and friends struggle to communicate as their power-mad government begins placing bans on letters as they fall from a statue of Nollop. With time running out, penalties high, and the population growing scarce, Ella struggles to create an even better sentence than Nollop's, using all of the letters of the alphabet- to prove once and for all that language is a gift everyone can and should wield.
What begins as an exercise in clever writing, quickly becomes a desperate struggle to make ones thoughts and feelings understood under the strictest censorship. While funny, clever, and an amazing writing and reading challenge, Ella Minnow Pea is also a parable about the dangers of censorship, totalitarianism, idolatry, and the human need for language. An impressive first novel, and a treasure trove to readers, writers, and communicators, easily shelved alongside language-bending classics like The Phantom Tollbooth and the poetry of e.e. cummings.