2006 books

[peteryoung]

10) Mark Dunn, Ella Minnow Pea, 2001
A curious kind of oulipo contrivance that at first engages, then infuriates, then begs the question what's the point other than to prove it can be done? But Dunn has points to make about totalitarianism and freedom of speech, sufficiently well that Ella Minnow Pea was selected as Borders’ ‘Book of the Year’ and was also turned into a stage play in Michigan in 2008. Deliberately written with a gradually decreasing alphabet with which to work, Dunn has useful things to say (or rather, imply) about the nature of dictatorship on a small island nation and the mindless imposition of meaningless laws. The wordplay, however, inevitably becomes constrained to the point of breaking the reader's patience, only redeemed by the rather cold cleverness of the concept.