Ella Minnow Pea
A Novel in Letters
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Ella Minnow Pea
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Narrated by:
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Lauren Ezzo
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Renata Friedman
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Michael Crouch
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Sara Morsey
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By:
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Mark Dunn
About this listen
A hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.
Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is "a love letter to alphabetarians and logomaniacs everywhere" (Myla Goldberg, best-selling author of Bee Season).
©2021 Mark Dunn (P)2021 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
“There’s the whiff of a classic about Ella Minnow Pea.” (The Christian Science Monitor)
“A love letter to alphabetarians and logomaniacs everywhere.” (Myla Goldberg)
“A curiously compelling...satire of human foibles, and a light-stepping commentary on censorship and totalitarianism.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Brilliant Lipogrammic Novel
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Now having finished it I can say that, along with its mind-bendingly difficult premise that was flawlessly delivered, it is also a fantastic story on government, on religion, on cultism, on relationships, and of course, on language.
The style of writing changes as the book goes on, in a way that is intentional to the story, and is genius in its execution.
At times the story does go dark in its themes and narrative, but even in those moments the author allows some levity (pay attention to the dates), which were certainly welcome and fit perfectly within the overall premise.
Each narrator did a great job in voicing the various characters.
Each character had their own twang or accent, so even if multiple characters were voiced by the same person, you can still tell the characters apart.
Also, after listening to so many audiobooks where one person voices every character, it was nice hearing female and male characters being voiced by narrators of their respective genders.
I went through this book via "Immersion reading”, and would highly recommend anyone wanting to experience the story to do the same, as the book is rather complex in its writing, spelling and grammar, so having the unique spelling of words in front of you while also listening to the audiobook was a immense help in truly appreciating and understanding the author's work while also being able to keep a steady pace while reading.
If you're a fan of good writing, or a unique plot, I cannot recommend this book enough.
The greatest lipogramatic book ever written
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