Reading \Ella Minnow Pea"" by Mark Dunn is a jarring and occasionally vexing experience. It is a job fogged by stopping very much, like a quiz on wax paper. The book is written in letters passed between several characters and they continually shift from obedient people to fearful folks to refugees. The plot has a way of disappearing from time to time and it lurches when it starts back up. And, apparently, there are a whole lot of letters missing from this book.
Ordinarily, this would create a thoroughly unreadable mess. However, Dunn's premise allows all these factors that would otherwise be faults contribute to and enhance the story.
In the fictional island of Nollop there stands a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. This man gave the world the phrase, ""The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,"" a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet. This pangram is the basis for the society of Nollop, a semi-utopia with the lexicon and grammar held in the highest esteem. It is a place where every utterance is a golden phrase and every admission is adorned with silk fringes.
The bliss of Nollop is shattered when a tile on Nevin's statue does the exact same thing. In pieces beneath the statue is the broken z, fallen from the phrase that Nollop stands above. The Council of the island interprets this as a sign and bans the letter z from use. A dozen becomes twelve, lazy becomes unmotivated and the people of Nollop become irritated. The troubles pile up when q, j and d take the plunge. Eventually the citizens of Nollopton, intimidated by threats and stripped of expression, leave their land.
Then the hero of the story, Ella Minnow Pea, emerges. She bands together the remaining Nolloptonians in a final, desperate stand and they become the last defenders of the Alphamo. It falls to Ella to build a better pangram by marshalling all the forces of her phonemes, deploying her diphthongs and calling the consonants to arms.
Because the story is written from the various views of the islanders, their epistles lose letters as they fall. As the chapters go on the letters go out. This is an impressive achievement because Dunn skillfully manages to continue to articulate the emotions of marooned people holding onto their small place in the sand. Though the d falls, there is still a sense of the past tense. The ability to make language vibrant and precise while chopping it apart is that little bit of a bent corner that can turn ""Ella Minnow Pea"" from an ordinary book into a favorite.
But beneath the playful quality of the work there is a serious evaluation of censorship and expression. While the quick brown fox may do whatever he wants, the simple process of speaking it is attacked.
Though the pangram may say what happens, it is up to the reader to decide how precisely it can state it. It can be as sharp as the image of the following example, ""Back in my quaint garden, jaunty zinnias vie with flaunting phlox,"" or as muddled as the second sentence of this review.
