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If "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" is your kind of language game, then Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea (2001) might be your kind of book. On the small coastal island of Nollop, named for Nevin Nollop, the supposed creator of the pangram* about the dog and the fox, a cenotaph bearing the famous sentence is falling apart, letter by letter. The town council decides that destroying letters is Nollop's divine will, and bans the use of each letter as it falls to the ground--with increasingly draconian punishments for anyone caught reading, writing, or speaking them. Can a a few desperate townspeople save language--and themselves--from these letter-perfect theocrats? * Pangram: "A phrase, sentence, or verse composed of all the letters of the alphabet." [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes on Feb 11, 2023 - 1 comment

Named one of The Guardian's "Best Books of 2016." From the author of My Brilliant Friend. This book invites readers into Elena Ferrante’s workshop. It offers a glimpse into the drawers of her writing desk, those drawers from which emerged her three early standalone novels and the four installments of My Brilliant Friend, known in English as the Neapolitan Quartet. Includes over 20 years of letters, essays, reflections, and interviews. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes on Jul 15, 2018 - 0 comments