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    Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
    Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
    Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
    Audiobook4 hours

    Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters

    Written by Mark Dunn

    Narrated by Lauren Ezzo, Renata Friedman, Michael Crouch and Sara Morsey

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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, bestselling author of Bee Season).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Release dateSep 28, 2021
    ISBN9780593560464
    Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
    Author

    Mark Dunn

    Mark Dunn is a lifelong word lover and the author of Ella Minnow Pea (nominee for Book Sense Adult Fiction Book of the Year, and winner of the Borders Original Voices Awards for fiction), Welcome to Higby (short listed by Publishers Weekly as one of the best novels of the year), and Ibid: A Life. He makes his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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    Reviews for Ella Minnow Pea

    4/5

    1,419 ratings142 reviews

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    • 4/5
      An epistolary novel about missing letters of the alphabet, the very concept of this book is a pun.
      The letters that make up this book are both the medium and the message, as the senders, Ella & Tessa and occasionally others, struggle to communicate with a decreasing variety of letters as well as the punishments and consequences for failing to comply with the limitations. Bases around the deification of originator of the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." and a Council that decides that when a letter falls from the monument, it becomes illegal to use. Eventually only "LMNOP" remain before the island people are saved by:
      "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs."
      Amusing enough to spend the time with, but not quite worth popping to the top of the TBR stack for its own virtues.
    • 4/5
      The country of Nollop lives in homage to deceased (and fictional) Nevin Nollop, originator of the pangram, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” There’s even a memorial in stone tiles that spell out the pangram. But homage has morphed into deification, and when the tiles start falling and shattering, government leaders implement what they believe to be Nollop’s post-mortem command: ban each fallen letter from use, with swift and severe penalties to anyone who violates the ban.

      Originally published in 2001, I was struck by how relevant to today are its threats of censorship, authoritarianism and political veneration. The story itself is clever, fun, a bit thin.
    • 5/5
      I've been looking for Ibid: A Life by this author for years. Today, I finally found it-- but it didn't look as good as I thought. Fortunately, this gem was sitting right next to it on the shelf.

      Ella Minnow Pea is a relatively simple little satire about fanaticism told with a wonderful sense of energy and fun. As the story progresses, it also acquires darker undercurrents of divorce, madness, and death, flowing tragicomically from the extension of one ludicrous idea. I'd almost recommend it as a children's book, but the prose is honestly difficult (although always entertaining) and especially toward the end it becomes nearly impossible to read. At slightly over 200 pages, it's short-- I read it in a sitting-- so give it a shot! As for my copy, I'm torn between circulating it among all my friends as soon as humanly possible and selfishly clinging to it and reading it over again.
    • 4/5
      Lovely, clever, and funny, a fascinating exercise in language and community.
    • 4/5
      Read in one sitting (actually one "lying down"). Funny "novel in letters" about a community progressively losing access to its letters. Reads like a practice run for Dunn's later, more expansive and better but in some ways similar (cut-off communities, manufactured realities) Under the Harrow.
    • 5/5
      I have wanted to read this book for a long time, solely based on its title. It is an epistolary novel set on a fictional island called Nollop, after the man who created the phrase "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." When the tiles of the letters of this phrase begin falling off the statue of Nollop, the town council takes it as a sign that Nollop wants the letter banished from the alphabet. First comes Z, then Q, and so on.
      While the book is highly entertaining as the townspeople must find new words to use to avoid penalties and banishment, it is really a look at how totalitarianism is a problem in society, and the overreach of zealots who misinterpret or cast their beliefs on others, and how we must fight back against this, else society as we know it will cease to exist.
      I loved it, especially in light of the extremes presented in society today.
    • 2/5
      Mark Dunn's "Ella Minnow Pea" was OK. But I've read Georges Perec's "A Void" and seen how brilliant a similar concept can be, so it really didn't impress.
    • 5/5
      Oh, how I loved this book! It is creative and humorous and manages to slip in a tiny bit of romance as well. The book concerns the fictional island of Nollop, which was named for Nevin Nollop, author of the phrase I think all of my generation knows well. It contains all the letters of the alphabet and was a wonderful typing (yes, on typewriters!) exercise because of that quality: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." As the letters begin to fall from the memorial statue of Nevin Nollop, the Council believes it is Nevin telling them that these letters should not be used. The book is written in letters - epistles not alphabetic - and gets very silly and fun as more letters of the alphabet are banned. Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season, declares this “A love letter to alphabetarians and logomaniacs everywhere.” Agreed!
    • 4/5
      This was a delightful little tale of censorship and abuse of power by parochial bureaucrats. On the fictional utopian yet luddite island of Nollop, home of Nevin Nollop, coiner of the pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," letters from the famous phrase begin to fall off the memorial to this honored ancestor. The High Council decides that it is the will of Nollop that the fallen letters be stricken from the spoken and written language of the unusually articulate Nollopians.

      The story is told in the form of correspondence among the Nollopians that progressively eschews the forbidden letters as they fall one by one.

      The eponymous heroine (eventually reduced to signing her letters "LMNOP") persists in trying to save the day with a clever word game, remaining witty even when down to those five letters: "No mo Nollop pomp! No mo Nollop poo poo!"

      This was the funny, clever novel I'd hoped The Eyre Affair would be but wasn't. It was charming, it was clever, it had me looking in the dictionary, and it had me scribbling on my bookmark right along with Ella as we tried to solve the puzzle that could save Nollop.

      The original hardcover edition's subtitle, "A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable," suits the tone of the text to a T, but I have to say that the punnishing "A Novel in Letters" isn't entirely out of place either.
    • 5/5
      Ella Minnow Pea, by Mark Dunn, was published in 2001, but is still timely twenty years later. While my paperback copy had the simple subtitle of "A Novel in Letters," the original subtitle on the hardcover was "a progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable." While I knew epistolary meant the story was told via letter-writing, lipogram was a new word for me. A lipogram is a written work composed of words selected so as to avoid the use of one or more letters of the alphabet.

      Ella Minnow Pea is a resident of Nollop, an independent (fictional) island off the coast of North Carolina, formerly called Utopianna, whose citizens are "elevating language to a national art form" (from the front matter). In 1904 the name of their country is changed to Nollop, to honor an early resident who devised the well-known "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" pangram (a sentence that uses all letters of a given alphabet at least once).

      The phrase is immortalized in tiles on a monument to Nollop. One day the letter Z falls off. The country's leaders think it is a sign from the dead Nollop, and decree that letter is no longer to be used. As more tiles fall, more letters are banned, and citizens have to get creative with their vocabulary (and eventually spelling) in their written and spoken communications to each other. Much of the story is told through letters between Ella and her parents, cousin Tassie and aunt Mittie, and others.

      The country loses population as people move away either voluntarily, or via banishment after three offenses of the rules. Ella and a visiting American, Nate, try to convince the leaders that the tiles are falling off due to bad glue, but only succeed in getting them to agree to withdraw the rules if, within a limited time, they can come up with a 32-letter pangram (shorter than Nollop's by three letters - thus eliminating the obvious possibility of just changing one "the" in his sentence to "a"). Down to the deadline and with just five letters left in the alphabet (L, M, N, O, P - get it?), Ella finds a solution in a surprising place.

      I really liked this clever book.
    • 3/5
      On a fictional island off the coast of Georgia (always a good set-up), a society has formed that celebrates the genius of Nevin Nollop, the man who created the phrase, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." One day, the lettered tiles that comprise this sentence begin to fall off their adjoining statue. Taking it as a sign from the long-deceased Nollop, the bigwigs decide that the fallen letter must therefore be removed from written and oral communication. Chaos ensues, as you may imagine.

      This was a quick, clever, cute little book. Not only does it concern alphabetic letters, it is structured around letter (epistle)-writing, and so the reader gets a feel for the insanity (literally) that such an edict might arouse. There was nothing entirely threatening about this book, which was perhaps a set-back, as I like my books about utopias-gone-awry to really strike fear in me. However, it certainly made its point in providing the classic allegory of what can happen when people in positions of power defer to a supernatural interpretation to govern others--how arbitrary, senseless, and harmful it can be. Consequently, this book reminded me of how ridiculous I often find religion and living life according to some supernatural deity.

      Yet, like I said, it was fairly cute despite its overall theme. I am craving something that packs more of a punch. Thankfully, I have an idea of what that will be....
    • 5/5
      Parable, satire, or just plain fun, this delightful little novelette traces the misfortunes which befall the inhabitants of a mythical island off the coast of South Carolina when letters begin disappearing from the alphabet.

      The island, you see, was the home of the equally mythical Nevin Nollop, he who composed that catchy little phrase “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” It’s a pangram, you see – a sentence including all 26 letters of the alphabet, and useful to typesetters, beginning typists, code writers, and anyone else who has need to corral individual symbols into coherent words. Their commemorative statue to Nollop, decorated with tiles spelling out his claim to immortality, is beginning to age somewhat, and one day – horrors! – one of the tiles slips from its mortar and crashes to the ground. Whereupon the Ruling Council decides this to be a message from beyond the grave – that the saintly Nollop is decreeing that henceforth no one should use the fallen letter (this one happens to be “Z”) in either spoken or written form.

      As additional tiles begin to fall, additional letters are banned, and author Dunn dutifully soldiers on without them in the narrative, which is composed entirely of letters and written notes between characters. One could become very analytical about this, and discuss the conflict between the human drive to communicate and the equally compelling drive to remain part of one’s culture, or draw parallels between repressive dictatorships and freedom of speech. Or one could simply sit back and enjoy the fun as the remaining letters are gang-pressed into service to get the point across.

      A few sub-plots emerge – a couple of romances, attempts to either unseat the Ruling Council or to convince them to rescind their draconian rulings, and a final desperate project to create a new pangram, thus proving Nollop was not divinely inspired. But the real fun is just watching the language emerge as the characters unwillingly play a kind of linguistic Jenga – how many letters can they extract before the whole language collapses?

      Great fun for word lovers. And be sure to read the datelines on the notes and letters, which become progressively sillier as writers struggle gamely on as more bits of the alphabet elude them.
    • 2/5

      I like the conceit well enough, and it's a fun and unusual way to drive the narrative. Unfortunately, the plot itself fell flat for me. There were little glimpses of interesting characters and subplots and the stuff that forms the life of a novel, but too much of it felt contrived (in a bad way). I suspect some people who are really, really excited about words will be happy with this as a love letter to the English language. Judged as a book, though, I think it comes up short.

    • 4/5
      This is "a progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable." Luckily this is explained right inside the first page. Learned a new word: lipogram -- a written work composed of words selected so as to avoid the use of one or more letters of the alphabet. The author certainly cleverly employs this tactic. Written exclusively in letter form, this novel is set in the fictional island country of Nollop, named also fictitiously for the man, Nevin Nollop who created the pangram : The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Another new word: pangram: a sentence composed of all letters of the alphabet. So in this small idyllic community that is isolated by location and intent, all the inhabitants communicate by written letter. Sounds lovely! Though set in present day, the letters give everything an antiquated feel. When the statue of Nollop in the city center begins shedding letters from his famous pangram, the city council takes it as a sign from him beyond the grave that those letters are no longer to be used in speaking, writing or any other form of communication. And so that letter begins to disappear from the book too. It actually gets a little difficult to read in the last 20 pages or so -- mental exercise, but I respect the effort of the author on this one. Told mostly by main characters in the Pea family, Ella, (18) her parents, her cousin Tassie (19) and Tassie's mother, the story unfolds gradually, but with increasingly dire consequences based on the punishments for using the forbidden letters. This is where the fable part comes in: this is a cautionary tale about abuse of power and interpretation of "signs" and losing sight of reason. Sound timely? The leaders completely disregard Mr. Nollop's other edict: "Love one another, push the perimeter of this glorious language. Lastly, please show proper courtesy; open not your neighbor's mail." (74) The only thing that can save Nollop and its few remaining inhabitants is the creation of a new pangram. Very playful, funny and unusual, this book will be unlike anything you've ever read, guaranteed -- and not just because most of the letters go missing!
    • 4/5
      I love the whole idea of this novel. The concept of the importance of language (and also how sometimes things can be taken a bit far). Brilliant
    • 3/5
      Ella Minnow Pea lives on the fictional island of Nollop, founded by the inventor of the quick-lazy-fox pangram. He and his pangram are immortalized in a statue on Nollop, but one day, letters begin to fall from the pangram. The island's council decrees that these fallen letters must be symbols from Nollop, from beyond the grave, so the island's residents are required to excise each letter from their speech after it falls. Written as a series of letters, the story chronicles the lives of Ella and her friends and family in an increasingly controlled environment.

      I've been aware of this book for quite a while, so it was fun to finally read it. I enjoyed the cleverness in wordings as the available letters diminished, and I appreciated the satirical aspects of the council's decrees and power as well.
    • 5/5
      I have never left a book review before, but I feel the need to for this book. Possible minor spoilers ahead.

      Put simply, this is quite possibly my new favourite book of all time. I read it in a single sitting (it's a fairly easy read), and I was totally engrossed the entire time.

      As a lover of language and linguistics, its simple premise was enticing and entertaining for me, whilst the heartbreak and humor tugged at the more empathetic parts of me. Watching how the months and days changed at the top of the pages was very interesting, and the changes in orthography throughout the latter half of the book were equally intriguing. On a few occasions I actually had to read words out loud to myself to see what they were meant to represent, which felt immersive, causing me to share in the citizens of Nollop's plight.

      I think that Dunn picked the perfect medium to tell this tale. It definitely would not have worked as traditional prose, and I loved the letter format. However, this means that the last three books I have read have not been traditional prose, so I definitely need to get back to that for a bit.

      I will definitely be revisiting this book at some point, but for now I must close by recommending it to literally everyone.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book! It has intriged me for a while to think about having something like what happened in this book. What would happen if we lost our power to communicate through written and verbal word and this book fulfilled that scenario for me!

      It was quite a great way to tell a story through letters something that is being dropped as an art form because of computers and texting on cell phones.

      I must start writing with my natural hand more to those I wish to communicate with!
    • 5/5
      The ruling elders of the tiny island of Nollop have decreed that their deceased town founder, Nevin Nollop, is the One True God, and he lets his will be known by making letters fall off his commemorative statue. Each time a letter falls, island residents may no longer use it in speech or in writing. It does not help that Nollop is the putative originator of the sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," and that this sentence appears on his memorial.

      Beyond the wordplay, this lipogrammatic story can be read as an satire of ecclesiastical arrogance or government overreach. The gimmick gets a little strained at the end, but still this book rewards the short amount of time it takes to read it.
    • 2/5
      I was going to write tis post tee wae lotsa Ella Minnow Pea is written… I’ll spare ewe (also me).

      Ella lives on Nollop, an island near South Carolina named after Nevin Nollop (whose claim to fame is the authorship of the phrase “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nollop contains a statue of Nevin along with his famous phrase. However, the letters of “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” begin to drop off and shatter, with horrifying consequences. It becomes forbidden for any resident to write or speak a word containing a letter no longer found on the monument. Any person who uses a forbidden letter risks being placed in a headstock, lashed, or even banished.

      As more and more letters vanish, the situation becomes dire and communication becomes increasingly difficult. Council agrees that if – and only if – someone can come up with another phrase shorter than Nevin Nollop’s that uses all of the letters of the alphabet, things can go back to the way they were.

      Ella Minnow Pea is told through letters – primarily those exchanged by Ella and her cousin Tassie but also including correspondences from a variety of people involved. And, most intriguingly, as letters become forbidden, so too do they vanish from the novel. The book starts normally – albeit a bit verbose for my liking. By close to the end, it is almost unreadable. Ella mentions that she finds it too tiring to “sae watt I most sae in langwage one mae onterstant.”

      The idea behind the book is fantastic, reminding me of childhood favourites like The Phantom Tollbooth and The Number Devil. With main characters in their late teens and early twenties, though, Ella Minnow Pea falls squarely into my age range. I love the idea of using progressively fewer letters to tell a story. The way the characters coped with it – from unusual vocabulary choices to phonetic substitutions – was sometimes difficult to read but still enjoyable. I can’t even imagine how painstaking this must have been to write.

      And, most of all, I loved how Nollop’s government elevated Nevin Nollop to god-like status. This isn’t just a book that plays with language and uses creative spelling: it’s about religious fundamentalism and totalitarian governments.

      Having said all of that, this book was not my cup of tea.
      1. The entire plot seems to ignore an extremely obvious solution. Someone needs to come up with a pangram shorter than Nevin Nollop’s? Eliminate a superfluous “the.” “A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is two letters shorter than Nollop’s original sentence. “Quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is even shorter. Problem solved. I kept on waiting for someone to bring this up or offer some explanation for why this wasn’t a possibility. No one did.
      2. The book seems to conflate written and spoken language a bit. When the Z is gone, why is it illegal to say “realize” but not “is” (which contains the same /z/ sound)? Why can’t people just be pronouncing “realise” instead? Why does this apply to both written and spoken words when there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence of letters to speech sounds? Why don’t people start using some aspects of sign language? Or languages that don’t use the same alphabet? Or, in that case, would you be able to write the words but not speak them? Or could you just start using some characters from the phonetic alphabet? Or…? Maybe the flaws in logic were deliberate, to illustrate how little the government had considered its new laws. Maybe the author just overlooked them. Either way, as I was reading, I got more and more tied up in written vs. spoken language, which distracted me from…
      3. …the writing style. And the writing style needed a lot of attention. The unusual words, the way the voice sounded the same regardless of who was writing the letters, the frequent telling instead of showing… all of this combined to make the book a dense read. I found myself skimming to get ahead. And then I hit the point where everything was sounded out with multiple substitutions, and I had to stop and painstakingly read sentences aloud before I knew what was happening. I don’t mind it when prose challenges me, but wow, this was not the light and easy read that some reviews would have me believe.
      4. There were some grammatical errors. Come on, in this of all books, you’d think the author and the editor would be more careful.

      In a nutshell, I liked the idea behind this book. The execution? Not so much. Ella Minnow Pea could have benefitted from some closer attention to detail… or it would have been a fantastic short story.
    • 4/5
      Gosh, I hate to nitpick a rating, but this is anywhere between 3 and 5 stars depending on how much you're willing to forgive or overlook.

      This book features a trapeze act of a premise: chapters eliminate letters progressively, until only a few are left for the characters to use with each other. In sticking to this restriction, Dunn does great, showing awesome creativity.

      However.

      This is a book, after all, not a page out of a puzzler column. And as a book, it doesn't really work. The plot he comes up with to justify why the characters must abandon letter after letter is, frankly, ludicrous—which wouldn't be a problem in itself if the wackiness worked with the story. But it doesn't. A loopy fairytale about an island worshipping the inventor of the Quick Brown Fox pangram isn't also a convincing story of life under brutal, censorship-happy tyrants.

      Add to that the near uniformity of all the voices we hear, and it's a flatter experience than it ought to be. I shouldn't have to wait until the end of a letter to see its signature and realize who wrote it!

      It's an impressive trapeze act, but I can see the wires holding up the performer from a mile away.
    • 4/5
      Clever writing!! Interesting study of linguistics while also a commentary of irrational governments. I was sucked right in and flew through this in just a few hours. A small island nation's government inexplicably determines a supernatural force is guiding the changes to their language. Drunk on the power they wield over the ever shrinking populace, their proclamations become ever more ridiculous and destructive to their people and culture. Almost too far gone to be saved by anyone, an accidental turn of phrase is enough to save the few remaining natives and restore emigrants to their former lives while taking down the corrupt counsellors. As a lover of language, watching the tale unfold with fewer and fewer letters at the author's disposal was indeed fascinating all by itself!
    • 2/5
      Hm, my first impressions are obviously colored by my training as a linguist. The author is clear that in the storyline, people are banned from using certain letters, both in writing and in speech. However, he's not rigorous about applying this. One resident is punished for saying a banished sound, [z], in certain words because they're spelled with 'z', but at the same time, everyone is using words that contain the sound [z], whether spelled that way or not (such as 'is').

      Obviously the point of the book is totalitarianism, but it would still be nice if authors were consistent about language.

      The story moves along at a nice pace, but I have to say that the ending is a real disappointment. Not the fact that Enterprise 32 succeeded, but how life just returned to normal instantly. It would've been nice to have some wrap-up, especially about the consequences for the islanders and the Council members.
    • 4/5
      A cute book for anyone who loves letters, words, and freedom of speech. One by one letters of the alphabet are dropped from use making life, relationships, and survival quite difficult. Why were they dropped and how does it all end??? You'll have to read the book.
    • 5/5
      As letters fall off a monument in the town center, citizens may no longer use them. A fun, ridiculous tale told in letters sent and received, growing increasingly difficult for the reader as we try to follow along and understand the words told in an ever diminishing alphabet. Lovers of language will love it!
    • 5/5
      Oh My Gosh! I had heard about this book several years ago and had it on my "Book Recc" list. Now I certainly know why and it was worth the wait. Readers can fully enjoy this at the level of a really clever story about a fictional island community who gradually decree a ban on letters of the alphabet. The entire book consists of written communication between islanders. It can also be appreciated for its humorous highlighting of the precious value of words as a means to connecting people to one another, and even as a means to human existence. On the most profound level, the reader understands how horrifying it would be to live under a set of rules set by close minded, megalomaniacal leaders who refuse to listen to scientific facts. Sounds a bit more relevant than expected? Marvelous story and disturbingly vital message!
    • 5/5
      Loved the very idea of this book before I bought it. Very rarely do I want the physical book enough to seek it out (electronic copies are more my "immediate speed"), but I read this one with highlighter in hand, and will keep it on my shelf for re-reads.

      But I get ahead of myself.

      Written in epistolary form, for which I am a sucker, the fictional island of Nollop read amazingly like it was set in my own tiny community. The people are wonderfully real, cleverly written, and react in much the same way we all do: immediate compliance to rules, followed by a bit of questioning, followed by a concerted effort to change what we find disagreeable. Because of the story flow, I had to read the last several pages aloud to hear the phonetics of the words and understand the sentences. I loved the interactive nature of the end!

      While this book is very witty and introduces words both real (rarely used, which I will have to look up later) and imagined (warning: I may now work some into my own lexicon), the very sly commentary on what we venerate struck a deep chord within me. In an very subtle style, Dunn makes profound observations on the corruption of power, blindly following rules, the view of an outsider looking in, and finally, the dissolution of status quo. And all in such an entertaining and engaging story.

      Thanks to my friend Lara for the recommendation, and I am now passing the recommendation on to you!
    • 4/5
      Wonderful! Lots of word play -- very innovative and creative. Loved it!
    • 3/5
      Read this one for our July book club meeting. Is it possible to create a single sentence using every letter of the alphabet. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

      The town statue has this very plaque by the creator of the sentence and when letters begin to slowly fall off instead of repairing the plaque the civic leaders choose to ban the use of the letters as they begin to fall.

      The book is about censorship and unintended consequences of rules that are not thought out before they are put into effect.
    • 4/5
      This is one of a handful of books where I think it's helpful to know the basic conceit of the book before you start. I marked this as to-read ages ago, but by the time I started, I'd forgotten anything about the premise. As a result, I found it really difficult to get through the first chapter (I felt a little bit lost) and considered giving up and moving on to another book. However, I ended up re-reading its description on goodreads and got excited about it all over again -- and from there, very much enjoyed the creativity of this book.

      The subtitle is "A Novel in Letters" -- which is a neat little line of double-meaning, since the novel is told both in the form of letters from person to person, and also a novel about letters, literally -- about what happens when letters disappear from use. The title is fun too; say it out loud if you haven't figured it out yet. The rest of the book is just as clever.