Technique vs Plot: Which makes a book great? - "Ella Minnow Pea"

Madie's Margins

“Ella Minnow Pea” (or L-M-N-O-P) by Mark Dunn is one of the few epistolary novels I’ve read since my elementary-school days of “Dork Diaries” and “Dear Mr. Henshaw,” and I must admit, from the silly title and cover art alone, I assumed it was a children's book. You would think that an avid reader would know better than to judge a book by its cover!

The premise of “Ella Minnow Pea” is that on a small autonomous island just off California, there is a society governed by a satirical totalitarian regime which enforces an alphabet cult where they worship Nevin Nollop, author of the well-known pangram, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

In the island’s main square stands a statue of Nollop, with the praised pangram tiled upon a pedestal. However, as the statue ages and weathers, the “Z” tile falls and shatters. The superstitious council takes this as a sign from Nollop that the letter Z should be permanently abolished, and the council forbids its use in speech or writing, with increasingly severe consequences for infractions. At first, it is easy to avoid the taboo letter, but what happens when another tile falls? And another, and another…

While the premise of “Ella Minnow Pea” is fascinating, the most impressive part of the novel is the way Dunn writes a cohesive story with an ever-shrinking pool of letters. Since the book is entirely composed of correspondence to and from the network of main characters, including the namesake character, Ella, Dunn’s vocabulary is bound just as theirs is, leaving you in disbelief when the letter “D” is among the first to go.

There are pages upon pages with no “said,” “and” or “dear,” the latter being the opening for every letter up until that point. However, the writing stays shockingly natural, even with the increasing constraint; replacement words don’t start to feel forced until much later in the book when it becomes impossible to communicate with phonetic accuracy.

With this information alone, I would easily rate this book with a perfect five stars. However, the further into the book you get, the weaker the plot becomes. “Ella Minnow Pea” is satire, and a very whimsical take on a dystopian fable, reminiscent of “Animal Farm” by George Orwell, although Orwell’s work is distinctly darker than Dunn’s. In cases like this, you often see the argument that moments of implausibility are an essential facet of the genre. This argument has been used before for other works, like “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” a book that should never have been written, but that’s another discussion for another time.

However, there is a distinct difference between a plot being nonsensical and a plot making no sense. In the case of “Animal Farm,” the plot is driven by talking animals, which by principle is absurd. However, Orwell uses this unusual medium to construct this brilliant extended metaphor that is clearly understandable, has a watertight plot and escalates logically, proving it entirely possible to produce a stellar work within the genre’s parameters. Making it even more upsetting when a novel like “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” fails to create a satisfactory plot within its medium, leaving it poorly written, problematic and deeply offensive.

“Ella Minnow Pea” still functions as a story, and it manages to handle very intense themes in a manner that is light and uncontroversial, but it doesn’t boast the logical progression of “Animal Farm.”

An example of this is the various subplots meant to flesh out the story, introduce new perspectives as other characters are forced to leave Nollop and add urgency to the A plot. While several of them are interesting and of great benefit to the work as a whole, others are overly brief or even irrelevant, especially toward the end. They become increasingly repetitive, and the plot would have been significantly stronger if a few of these redundant storylines had been removed, as they tend to stall the plot right as we ramp up to the climax.

And speaking of the climax, I won’t spoil anything, but the story’s finale, while very clever, is a bit too abrupt and convenient, and the book ends very quickly after a solution is discovered, leaving me to wonder if without the gimmick of limited letters, the book loses a lot of its charm.

“But Madie,” you ask, astonished, “if the plot is weak and the resolution isn’t satisfying, why did you rate it 4.25 stars? Isn’t the plot the most important part of a story?”

I would argue, not necessarily. The importance of the plot of a story varies from book to book. With “Ella Minnow Pea” ’s unique premise, for this book specifically I would say the most critical piece of the story is technique, which Dunn shows in abundance. The disappearing alphabet and increasingly oppressive society form an extremely clever concept, and it would be impossible to do it any justice were it not for Dunn’s incredible technical skill.

Does “Ella Minnow Pea” always make sense?

Definitely not.

Will “Ella Minnow Pea” make your jaw drop?

Yes.

Is “Ella Minnow Pea” worth a read?

Absolutely.

Rating: 4.25/5