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Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn: book review

 


Ella Minnow Pea (2002) is set on the fictional island of Nollopton in one year from July to November.

 

Nevin Nollop has just used all of the letters in the English alphabet to make a sentence: Thequick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 

 

Villagers on the island write letters to each other as a form of communication—instead of phone calls. Through these letters, a young girl, Ella Minnow Pea, and her family—learn that Nevin Nollop is a hero for using all the letters of the alphabet to make a sentence. He will have a statue erected in his honour after his death. 

 

When he dies, his statue has his famous sentence displayed for all to see. One day a letter from the sentence drops off. The villagers take this as a bad omen. 

 

A rule of the island is that the letter that drops off the statue cannot be used ever again, in writing, or in speech. 

 

To break the bad omen, the villagers need to create a new sentence—a new pangram with all of the alphabet’s letters. Then another letter falls off the monument. Oh no, the omen is getting worse. The villagers need to hurry, but they are not as clever as Nevin Nollop. And then another letter drops off: ‘the growing fear coils about us.’ 

 

As more letters drop off, communication becomes restricted. The islanders want to bend the rules. Are they allowed to use ‘ph’ insead of ‘f’? Even more letters fall off. 

 

To match the dilemma of the villagers, the author restricts his writing–no z, no q, and so on, as the letters fall off Nevin Nollop’s statue: ‘Pharewell. Pharewell. Tho we were not phrents 4 long, I will so miss ewe.’

 

It becomes an interesting race against time to free speech from the omen–and to free speech. Ella Minnow Pea fights for freedom of expression. 

 

This is more than a comic tale. It is a satirical look at censorship, totalitarianism, superstition, and the power of language. It misses the intellectual mark, but the intent is there, and it’s interesting nonetheless. 







 

 

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).


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