Categories: book-review
Tags: book review
Date: 20 February 2009 18:43:48
Having taken a month and a half to read the last book group book, I have excelled myself by finishing the next one 3 whole days before we meet to discuss it! Admittedly this was helped considerably by the fact that "Ella Minnow Pea" is pretty short, and written entirely in the form of letters between the characters, meaning that it is really easy to read and doesn't take very long.
It is the story of the fictional island of Nollop, named after the author of the sentence 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' whom the islanders revere. The sentence takes pride of place on a monument, but one by one the letters start to fall off. When the first letter (z) drops, the high council of the island decree that it is a divine commandment by Nollop himself that they are to outlaw the use of that letter, whether writing or speaking. Punishment for breaking the ever more restrictive language decrees is severe - first offences are warned, second ones either go to the stocks or get the lash, third offences mean that the offender is banned from the island. From the blurb on the back: "As the alphabet relentlessly shrinks, the islanders are left with an ever-smaller pool of permitted words for their communications, love letters, urgent messages, threats - and underground resistance. It's a race against time as letters continue to fall until only l, m, n, o and p are left. How can they save themselves from being silenced for ever?"
I won't give away the ending, but suffice to say I enjoyed this book very much. To start with it put me very strongly in mind of the former state socialist countries where (to greater or lesser degrees) people had to be really ingenious in their subversion from the all-seeing authorities, but also where they had to learn to self-censor and were never sure whom they could trust. It also made me think of overly authoritarian religious leaders who exert such strong control over their followers. By the end I was mainly interested in how the few remaining people left on the island became more and more imaginative (but also exhausted) in finding different ways of expressing themselves.
Recommended, definitely. An even bigger plus was that I got a 1p copy from amazon, in pretty near perfect condition, I just had to pay postage. I'm always happy with a bargain :) I hope the next book's a good one - we've had quite the run of books I've enjoyed, I wonder how long that will last!