Ella Minnow Pea

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Already you get the sense that this is not going to be an easy, relaxing summer read, and indeed it isn’t, but that should definitely not count against it. The opportunities for exposition are restricted, though those that exist are utilised well and we learn all we need to about the characters but in a very matter of fact way. Ella Minnow Pea is a charming and clever fable of unlikely design, full of anything but idle wordplay.

Review: Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn - The Edge Review: Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn - The Edge

Why has Mark Dunn chosen to tell this story through letters rather than a more straightforward narrative? Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. This sentence is preserved on a memorial statue to its creator on the island and is taken very seriously by the government of the island.Uncompromising in their enforcement of Nollop's "divine will", they offer only one hope to the frustrated islanders: to disprove Nollop's omniscience by finding a pangram of 32 letters (in contrast to Nollop's 35). Wordsmiths of every stripe will appreciate this whimsical fable, in which Dunn brilliantly demonstrates his ability to delight and captivate.

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn | Goodreads

The final letters on the statue: LMNOP happen to sound like Ella’s name and contain the letters of Nollop’s name. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure. Soon communication becomes all but impossible, island life has come to a standstill, and the best and brightest of Nollop’s citizens have been exiled.People become fearful of others as neighbors turn one another in, “perpetuating old grudges and grievances. The nation is named for Nevin Nollop, who created the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," which contains all 26 letters of the alphabet in just 35 letters total. Ella Minnow Pea has been translated into French as L'Isle Lettrée by Marie-Claude Plourde, [ citation needed] into Italian as Lettere: Fiaba epistolare in lipogrammi progressivi by Daniele Petruccioli, [7] and into German as Nollops Vermächtnis by Henning Ahrens. Epunymous Title: Due to being a Punny Name-d Protagonist Title: "Ella Minnow Pea" sounds like the sequence of letters L-M-N-O-P. One can't get around the wordplay -- it's central to the novel -- but it seems almost a shame to focus on it, because the book is so much more than merely a clever game.