Thumbs up for Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. Literature.
This is what I call a “bath book” – a book of 200 pages or less that I can read over the length of one (very long) bath. And a most delightful bath book it is. It is a novel in letters (I won’t be poncy and call it “epistolary”), mostly sent between two teenage cousins who live on opposite sides of the hyper-literate island nation Nollop, which floats off the coast of the southern US. Most likely Nollop is a charming place to live, but the problem is, the local council of elders has gone bonkers and is outlawing the use of certain letters, one by one, on pain of – well, on pain of pain, or banishment, or even death. But certain citizens fight back…. A wonderful light read for anyone who loves words and wordplay. (While it is marketed as an adult book, it’s also appropriate for young adults of advanced vocabulary.)
PPS. You will notice that with the exception of the use of the letter “Z” in the anserous term “vocabu-lazy,” the affectionately familiar “Cuz,” and the mischievously manufactured “bezide,” the letter is employed nowhere else in this missive. My point stands on principle: to choose to use the letter if I so wish it, or to choose not to; such is my right – a right now to be eradicated by stroke of High Council pen. And with that, I cloze.
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