The story, such as it is, is an epistolary dialogue, mostly between the eponymous character and her cousin Tassie, but littered throughout with notes and notifications from various other family members and neighbours, all residing on the Pitcairn-like island of Nollop (formally Utoppiana), which is located twenty-one miles to the southeast of Charlestown, North Carolina.

The islanders pride themselves on a sense of community and the apparent equality in which all live their lives, until, that is, the cenotaph bearing the pangram attributed to the island’s favoured son, Nevin Nollop, loses one of its letters. The novel begins with a letter from Ella to Tassie, in which Ms Minnow Pea informs her cousin of this news. It doesn’t take long for the island’s mysterious Council to decree a ban on the use of the fallen letter. (‘Z’ being the particular letter in question.)

Whilst Ella sees this development as an exciting challenge, inaugurating a new era for the island, the more savvy Tassie sees through the new law and rejects it for the totalitarianism it is.

Of course it doesn’t take long for more letter-bearing tiles to begin dropping from the monument, and soon people are abandoning the island in their droves for the promised land that is the USA. (Funnily enough no mention made of Green Cards or work permits at this stage.) The Council start requisitioning the abandoned property and it's not long before the misuse of certain letters of the alphabet results in a number of floggings, imprisonments and yes, even executions, all the more disturbing when juxtaposed with the jollity of the storytelling.

All the while Dunn has ever-increasing lippogrammatical fun as his characters struggle to carry on communicating through the medium of words, remaining surprisingly coherent until the loss of the twelfth letter, the letter ‘U’, whereafter everything devolves into a brand of makeshift argot a la Russell Hoban’s ‘Riddley Walker.’ Once we reach this point though, there is obviously the necessity for a complete suspension of disbelief, as words in print and words uttered are two entirely separate entities, and it is simply not feasible that, when using a morphic vocabulary, lines between punctuation and spelling will not begin to diverge. Also, from page one I became suspicious of the lack of deaf islanders in a purportedly Utopian nation - are we to suppose that those with physical impairments offer too awkward a prospect to amalgamate in a society founded on principals of equality.

Other than the rather weak political digs that the story seems to be grappling onto for dear life in the hope of gaining some narrative credibility (How difficult is it to take a sideswipe at authoritarian extremism?) the novel revolves around the remaining law-abiding islanders pursuit of a pangram (a sentence containing all the letters of a given alphabet) made up of less letters than Nollop’s original.

And that, pretty much, is it. There’s plenty to marvel at, not least Dunn’s decision to lose the letter ‘D’ so early on. And if you love word-games, you’ll no doubt thrill at the prospect of reading this book. But if you want some of the other things many expect from a good read: strong characterisation and setting, emotional depth, vibrant, clear and unexpected plotting, you’d do well to look elsewhere.

As a literary curiosity, ‘Ella Minnow Pea’ was a revelation for me, and in spite of my criticisms, I highly recommend it. I suspect that this review will do its job well, causing the readers well suited to the read to make a mental note of it as one to look out for, and sending those not so inclined scurrying away to more tried and tested territory.

Neil Ayres was born in East London in 1979. He left school with a handful of GCSEs when he was 16 and has worked at times (and in no particular order) as a warehouseman, a cattery hand, a copy-shop assistant, a barman, a professional dog trainer and a cheap alternative to a computer database. He currently works in publishing. He lives on the Surrey/Sussex border in a house without a resident cat, though if there was one it could live without fear of being swung, as there’s not enough room to do such a thing. Neil is project manager for the ‘Book of Voices,’ an anthology of short stories due to be published by Flame Books in March 2005 in an attempt to raise awareness of the work of the Sierra Leone office of International PEN. Neil is also a member of Godisin, the first TTA writers’ workshop. In between all of the above, he is trying to get round to finishing his second novel and finding a decent agent. To read Neil’s story, ‘Changeling’ on the Showcase section of this site, click here or for more reviews by Neil, visit The New Review index here.

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.