13 Little Blue Envelopes, by Maureen Johnson

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Thistle

200px-13LittleBlueEnvelopescoverFrom Goodreads:

Inside little blue envelope 1 are $1,000 and instructions to buy a plane ticket.

In envelope 2 are directions to a specific London flat.

The note in envelope 3 tells Ginny: Find a starving artist.

Because of envelope 4, Ginny and a playwright/thief/ bloke–about–town called Keith go to Scotland together, with somewhat disastrous–though utterly romantic–results. But will she ever see him again?

Everything about Ginny will change this summer, and it’s all because of the 13 little blue envelopes.

There probably isn’t much in this book, depth-wise, but I really enjoyed it. It struck a chord with me. I loved seeing how Ginny changed and how much she learned about life and herself along the way. The things she did and saw during this trip were things she never would have done/saw without her aunt’s nudging, and while at times, she’s really frustrated with the whole situation, she does realize what a gift she’s received. This struck a chord with me specifically because in 1999, I took off for France on a six-week school summer program despite all obstacles (my boyfriend begging me not to go, the need to take out my first ever student loan, my fear that I wouldn’t know enough of the language, the fact that I have never been a risktaker of any sort…). I almost didn’t go to France that summer, but something told me I had to, I had to take that risk, and once I did, I ended up having so many adventures. Those six weeks abroad were probably the best time I’ve ever had in my life, and also contained some of the scariest moments. I could really understand all the fear and confusion Ginny experiences in this book, as well as the jubilation and fun.

As for negative points, I could only find one. At one point, Ginny and a couple friends she’s picked up along the way are headed towards a dock in Venice to take a boat to Greece. When the train arrives in Venice, they are in a big hurry, so they jump into a cab and speed through the roads to the dock. Wrong. Unless things have changed drastically since I was there in 1999, there are no cars in Venice. None. There are certainly no taxis, except for the water taxis (i.e. boats). Most of the “streets” are made of water. There is only one thoroughfare that I can remember that would even be big enough for a car to drive on, and it’s full of pedestrians. All the side streets that aren’t water aren’t much bigger than a sidewalk. I know Johnson has traveled around a lot, but I get the impression that she hadn’t been to Venice before writing this book. Or maybe she just didn’t expect people to know. Anyway, it’s a plothole, one that I didn’t appreciate in a book where every other city seems to be described in meticulous detail. I want to believe all those details are true, despite the single detail given about Venice being false. They felt real, anyway.

But really, that little negative isn’t such a big deal. Unfortunate, but it didn’t mar the book. If I hadn’t been to Venice, I wouldn’t have even noticed. I had a lot of fun with this. I liked Ginny, I liked a lot of the other characters, and I liked the things she came to realize about herself and her aunt by the end. It was an all around fun book, and I will probably read more by Johnson.

Posted in 2009, Prose, Young Adult | 2 Comments

Messenger, by Lois Lowry

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Thistle

messengerThis is the third book in the loosely-related trilogy including The Giver and Gathering Blue. It is more of a sequel to Gathering Blue, but ties The Giver in and answers all the questions I had at the end of both books. The protagonist, Matty, is Kira’s friend in Gathering Blue. He has left their community to live with Kira’s father in a community called Village. Village is a place where the wounded, abused, hungry, and outcast come for refuge. In the world where some sort of disaster has happened, allowing various communities with different rules to sprout all over the place in little mini-governments, it seems many communities are harsh and unforgiving. Almost primitive. But in Village, there is compassion and harmony.

That is, until about six years after Matty comes to Village. Something dark begins to seep into the community and its people. People begin to trade their “true selves” for material objects, leading to all sorts of cruelty among them. A band of them get together and vote to close Village to outsiders. Kira still lives outside the village, and Matty knows he must bring her back before the borders close, or she and her father will never see each other again. He sets off through an increasingly treacherous Forest on a dangerous and tragic mission.

I admit, I breathed a sigh of relief at the end of this book. The other two ended with so many questions left unanswered. Their endings felt rushed, as if another 5,000 words or so were needed to feel right. Messenger, while still rushed at the end, at least resolved itself. Sure, there were some questions unanswered – like what the role of Tradesman was, and how that interplayed with the selfishness and cruelty seeping throughout Village – but those questions were less important in the grand scheme of things. By the end, it’s clear this book is mostly metaphor, less grounded in reality than the other two were. Despite the fact that we don’t have all the answers, we do know what happens next, and where the future will go. I liked that. I liked the closure.

On the other hand, what I didn’t like about this book was the amount of mysticism in it. The other two had a certain amount of psychic fantastical elements. Jonas can “see beyond,” and psychically receives memories from his mentor in The Giver. In Gathering Blue, Kira can see the future through her weaving, and a couple other characters have similar abilities. In this book, Matty has the ability to heal. That, I can deal with. What bothered me was that in this book, Forest became a magic element. Plants grew at amazing speeds; twigs would visibly grow, sharpen, and attack people; swamps or rivers magically appeared where they’d never been before. When Forest decided villagers should no longer enter it, it gave them warnings, then “entrapped” them in vines, killing them, the next time they came in. At first, I thought this was all just superstition, and when people got lost/killed/hurt in the forest, people assumed it was due to magical properties. However, it becomes clear during Matty and Kira’s journey that the magic in Forest is not imagination or superstition. Forest is a living creature that can think and act for itself, hence worthy of a full name and not just a location (i.e. “the forest”). The book became too magical for me. Too fantastical. I was disappointed by it, because prior to that, the trilogy had obeyed primary logic, with only the psychic abilities thrown in. I liked that. I didn’t like this.

However, despite not really liking Forest and its role in the book, I still didn’t want to put the book down. Lowry is great at capturing my attention and demanding that I read all in one sitting. Her books are fairly short, which is good considering I probably wouldn’t sleep otherwise. Once I pick one of her books up, I don’t really put it down until I’m done. She is a really, really good writer.

Of the trilogy, I think I like The Giver the best, and it will be interesting to go back and reread it now that I know what happens to Jonas beyond the end.

Posted in 2009, Children's, Prose | Tagged | 1 Comment

A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Thistle

200px-A_Thousand_Splendid_SunsThis book is about two women, Miriam and Laila, who are married to the same abusive man, Rasheed, in Kabul. The two women are about twenty years apart in age, and the book explores their lives prior to, during, and after their marriage to Rasheed, spanning several decades of Afghanistan’s turbulent history. Pretty much anything I say beyond that would be a spoiler, so I’ll stop there.

This is the first thing I’ve read by Hosseini. I don’t know how this one compares to his other book, The Kite Runner. I don’t know which people like better. I have heard this one called brilliant. While I think it was a good book, and certainly had me reading along pretty fast, I’m not sure I could call it brilliant. For one, the writing was average, and the author seemed to have a fascination with certain bodily functions (always a turnoff for me). Two, American idioms found their way into this book that is entirely about Afghan culture, and that kept throwing me off center. Three, there was a certain amount of sensationalism in it, which made it feel less poignant. The story was also a bit average for me, but I’ve read a lot of books about Afghanistan, so perhaps to others, this would feel more unique.

These drawbacks were relatively minor, though. For the most part, this was an interesting look at the political and social climate in Afghanistan through multiple governments. Things went from okay, to bad, to worse, to terrifying, to oppressive. It illustrated how terrible the Taliban is, and gave me another reason to be very thankful we aren’t ruled in our country by someone’s interpretation of a religious text. (Most of the time, anyway.) Hosseini also did a good job showing the terrible situation that many women faced in a country that cared very little about them. Instead of making them simple victims, he made both Miriam and Laila come alive, both with very different personalities, upbringings, and ways of dealing with their horrible homelife. They evolved over time, they grew, they learned. By the end of the book, I almost felt like I knew them, they were so real.

So all in all, this was a good book, and a decent characterization of a country very different from ours. I will probably read The Kite Runner at some point in the future.

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Sky Burial, by Xinran

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Thistle

sky-burial-xinranThis book was surprisingly captivating, interesting, and fast. I began to read it last night, and within an hour, I’d gone through the first quarter. The book is sort of a memoir-in-proxy. Xinran is a journalist, and in 1994 met a woman named Shu Wen. Wen had just returned to China from Tibet, where she’d lived for over three decades after getting separated from her army unit in 1958. For two days, Wen told Xinran her story, then disappeared out of her life forever. At least as of the writing and publishing of this book, Xinran had not seen her again. I don’t know if they ever got in contact afterwards.

Wen originally went to Tibet with the Chinese army in order to look for her husband. They had only been married for 100 days, and he’d left with the army after only three weeks of marriage. The army claimed he’d died, but no details about his death were available. Wen left China in order to search for him, not wanting to believe he was dead, thinking he was perhaps only lost. Almost immediately coming across conflict, Wen and another woman, Zhouma, are rescued by a Tibetan family. Most of the time of the book passes with this family, isolated and nomadic, where Wen is completely ignorant of what is happening politically or socially across China or Tibet. The book paints an intimate portrait of nomadic, spiritual life on the plains in Tibet. To me, that was the most fascinating thing about the book. The old Tibetan nomad culture was really fascinating.

I won’t give away any spoilers, but I will say that most mysteries are resolved by the end of this book. Not all, though. Since Wen and Xinran parted after two days, Xinran has no idea what happened to her after that long interview. She doesn’t know what happened to the people Wen was traveling with, or if some of the answers they were seeking were ever found. She doesn’t know if Wen went back to Tibet or stayed in China. That’s the unfortunate thing about memoirs, in proxy or not: they inherently leave you hanging. However, the book gave enough closure that I’m not frustrated with it.

This is a very simple and easy to read book, and doesn’t take much time. There isn’t a lot of plot, adventure, or thrills, so don’t read this if that’s what you’re looking for. But if you’re interested in this culture, or in the more human side of the conflict between Tibet and China, this is a good book for you.

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Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne

Posted on February 15, 2009 by Thistle

aroundIn summer of 2007, while visiting my brother in Chicago for his graduation, my dad told me that each time he traveled, he read this book. My dad’s a meticulous sort of person, just like the main character here, Phineas Fogg, and he gets ruffled easily when things don’t follow his schedule or plan. He hates delays of any sort, and gets real irritable. At least he used to. Now, he’s much less easily ruffled, and he attributes his newfound calmness to Around the World in Eighty Days. Phineas Fogg stays calm and collected on his journey, despite delays, and by reading this book, my dad says he’s been able to do the same.

It’s a silly little story, but it made me want to read this book, and I’ve finally gotten around to it. The basic premise is simple – Phineas Fogg bets that he can travel the world on a predetermined route in 80 days or less. The people he bets against don’t believe that’s possible, and indeed Mr. Fogg meets an incredible amount of delays along the way which attempt to stop him. I won’t say whether or not he succeeds, or what he learns on the way, but I will say I can see why my dad loves this book so much. It suits him.

For me, I enjoyed it, but honestly found it just a little boring. It’s an adventure novel, and I’m not really an adventure sort of person. I’m more into people, not plot. That’s not to say it isn’t good. It’s just not my cup of tea, so to speak. But, I do see why this is a classic and why it’s worth reading, and I can see why people love it. My eldest son loves it, and immediately started talking to me about the end as soon as I finished. He thought it was an exciting book.

I wish I could read this book in the original French. It’s simple enough, and I might try that one day.

Posted in 2009, Adult, Prose | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Thistle

goodearthMinor spoilers.

Rather than post a plot summary of this book, I’d rather take you through my thoughts about the story as I went along.

This book blew all my expectations out of the water, simply put. I expected to read a great, miserable saga of poverty and survival. When Wang Lung buys his first addition to his family’s land, I saw it as a pivotal moment of folly, spending his last bit of money instead of saving, a gateway to a future of pain and degradation. For awhile, my suspicions were confirmed, but then the family’s fortunes reverse, and the sting of starvation wasn’t quite as harsh. As the family became wealthier, I had to change my reading perspective. I began to see that this wasn’t a book about the misery of poverty, but the misery of wealth – not a terribly common sentiment at the time. There were, of course, books like House of Mirth, which showed how miserable the upper echelons of society could be, but even House of Mirth concentrates on the misery of the lesser elements of rich society, the hangers-on, those trying to retain their wealth. Not those at the very top, in any case. I can’t recall a single pre-1930s book offhand (though I’m sure there are some) that discuss how horrible it is to be the very richest among one’s compatriots, and to have the ability to get whatever one desires. They are always about the struggle to get more, or the struggle to retain what one once had. Not so with The Good Earth.

So my expectation changed, and I read the book with my new point of view in mind, until near the end, when everything changed for me again. By the time I finished, I realized two things. Maybe not everyone will interpret The Good Earth this same way, but this is what I got out of the book. First, whether a person is rich or poor, they will have moments of happiness and moments of misery. Their lives will be complicated, and there will be little rest. Second, every person’s life is more important to themselves than to anyone else. Just as Wang Lung hardly notices his sons, for example, and thinks of them only in relation to him, they, at the end, hardly notice him, and even while taking care of him, only think of him in relation to them. We are an inherently self-focused species. It didn’t take a selfish character to make me see this, but rather only a contrast of ordinary people in different stages of life. It was brilliant.

There is so much that can be talked about in this book – the treatment of women in that time/place, the value of family, the value of land, poverty versus wealth, and more. It’ll be a fun book to discuss next month at my book club. The book is written with complete naked honesty, and in the end it’s neither miserable nor hopeful. It is simple in style, very realistic in everything it discusses, and universal in its themes. I’m glad I own this one, and will likely read it again someday.

Posted in 2009, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Specials, by Scott Westerfeld

Posted on February 7, 2009 by Thistle

specials1Humanity is a cancer, and we are the cure.
–Dr. Cable of Special Circumstances

I’ve thought for a long time how I can write this review without spoilers, and I’m sorry, I don’t think I can. So if you’re planning on reading this series, skip this review. It’ll be better if you do. I’ll do my best to keep spoilers to a minimum, but it’d be better if you skip altogether.

I hardly know what to say about this book. Tally has been turned into a member of Special Circumstances, in an elite group started by Shay, the Cutters. They are wired to live outside the city, have been made practically inhuman in their bodies, and cut themselves to keep their minds clear. They are alternately filled with anger and euphoria, and they think they’re superior to everyone. They have obviously had their brains screwed with as well as their bodies, the same way pretties do when they get their operation.

Tally loves being a Special and a Cutter (of course – she’s been wired to!). She loves the connection of their skintenna, which allows the Cutters to communicate with each other through their skin, so that a whisper will carry miles outwards to every member of the clique. She loves being unique, special, and connected to this group (funny – she makes fun of a pretty clique in Pretties that does the same thing). But there’s one thing that upsets her – her boyfriend from Pretties, Zane, has not been made into a Cutter like her. It’s unexpected, and when she finds out he’s returned to New Pretty Town, she goes to visit him. Even more unexpected is how she now sees Zane. Her re-mutilated brain makes her see him as average and pathetic, and with Zane, it’s worse than with other non-cutters. His brain damage from Pretties made him mildly crippled, with shaky movements and lapses in cognition. He’s trying to get better, but all Tally can see is his shakiness and damage. He nauseates her. She wants more than anything to help him escape the city – if he escapes, he’ll prove he’s tricky enough to become part of Special Circumstances, and once he’s made cruel and wolf-eyed and “perfect” like her, she’ll be able to look at him again.

A trek across North America follows, with an eventual lead to a new city free of pretty-brains, a bunch of new information, a cure for the specials that Tally rejects, and all out war between cities.

I hardly know what to make of these books. With most books, I read, absorb, and compartmentalize. With these, I know immediately that I love them, but can’t seem to organize my thoughts. There’s so much in them! In Specials, Westerfeld addresses the issues of self-mutilation, the need to fit in, environmentalism, war, violence, revenge, death, brain damage, etc. I could go on and on. There’s so much, it makes me dizzy. That’s not a bad thing – it actually feels quite amazing to have something I can’t fully tackle. Something that I’ll have to read multiple times to absorb fully. Something that broke through my recent numbness and made me feel something very strongly.

See, this book broke me apart – I hadn’t felt so strongly about a character in a long time. I loved Zane, and he didn’t make it. I didn’t expect him to die. I very rarely cry at books, but cried when he died. I not only cried, but when I finished the book, I went and reread both Pretties and Specials in order to spend more time with him, then cried the second time he died, too. Maybe that makes me pathetic, but I think the books have to be so well done in order to affect me like that. I will definitely own this series one day, and I will probably read it to pieces the same way I did Harry Potter.

Specials isn’t as good as the other two books, in my opinion, but it’s not far behind them. The biggest flaws in the book (I’ll get to them in a moment) are countered by the fact that the book affected me so strongly. I think eventually I will come to love it as much as the others.

Flaws. First and foremost, there is too much action in this book. There’s too much plot, and not enough characterization. There aren’t enough quiet moments. There’s a good balance in the first two books between action and quiet moments, and I appreciated that. The quiet moments weren’t slow, just quiet. I needed more of them here. I was relieved when Tally began to follow Zane and the other pretties across the continent – it provided a much needed break from constant stimulation. On the other hand, the book seemed to be written to match Tally’s state of being – as a Special, as a Cutter. Her world is a constant stream of stimulation, so it makes sense for the book to be. It’s not in first person, but the POV is limited and sticks solely with her.

Second, I can’t yet reconcile the ending. Not after two readings. I can’t make sense of Tally’s decision, or perhaps I can make too much sense of it. In the end, despite everything she’s done, and despite everything they’ve done to her, she rejects the cure. She decides she can and has rewired her own brain, and is no longer a special-head. She thinks she’s freed herself from all her anger, euphoria, and feelings of superiority. She believes she’s learned to control herself. And in some ways, I agree, she does seem to control herself better, she no longer cuts herself, and she’s not quite as angry. On the other hand, the feelings of superiority haven’t gone away. She thinks they have, because now she can look at other people without mocking them, but at the same time, the only reason she doesn’t want the cure is because she wants to be unique, special, above-average. Her worst fear is to be ground back into averageness.

In the end, people win. They escape from the “cure” that has been placed on them to stop the spread of a cancerous humanity. But at the same time, Tally loses. She’s still being manipulated, controlled, and pushed around by the things people have done to her. She won’t change, despite her vigilante decision to “protect the wild” at the end of the book. She’s not human anymore. I wanted so badly for someone to take her and force her eyes open! I wanted her to recover, to be free from this inhuman condition Shay and Special Circumstances forced her into in the first place. I wanted her to take responsibility for the fact that it was her Special condition that caused Zane to die and then to do something about it! I wanted her to reject being Special!! But, I suppose this is a dystopia, and the ending is mixed good and bad. There is no clear hope – humanity may be free, but it’s already starting to destroy the earth again – and there is no clear despair – Tally is partially human again. Such a confusing message. To me. Probably to others, the messages in these books are perfectly clear, but my brain can’t fully wrap around them yet. All I can say is, if anyone is reading this who hasn’t read this series (and you shouldn’t be!! Spoilers!!), this trilogy is extremely worth reading. These have been my favorite books in awhile. It’s rare that I actually buy books instead of getting them from the library, but these will definitely join me soon, and have a spot on my special shelf, too.

First book: Uglies
Second book: Pretties

Posted in 2009, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Three Incestuous Sisters, by Audrey Niffenegger

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Thistle

2011_1_321_mSpoilers.

Honestly, I’m having a difficult time considering this a true book. It’s supposed to be a graphic novel, but it reminds me of an adult-level picture book, with huge pictures on one page, and small bits of text opposite. Normally I wouldn’t even review it (it took me all of 10 mins to read) but I chose it as part of my Graphic Novel Challenge, and thus need to write up this review. I’ll make it short.

There’s very little plot (at least that makes sense) in this book. Three sisters – Ophile, Clothilde, and Bettine – live together (though not incestuously. As far as I can tell, there’s no incest in this book at all, despite the title). Bettine falls in love with a man named Paris, Ophile is jealous and sends them away after Bettine gets pregnant, and Clothilde kind of sits off in her own little psychotic world that makes no sense at all. Ophile tries to get revenge on her sister, ends up getting her killed, Paris runs off all sad, and the baby is snatched up by circus people because he has wings (due to Clothilde giving him psychic instruction while he was in the womb). Ophile kills herself, the baby grows up, and the three remaining characters have a reunion. The ghosts join in, too.

Okay. Um. Well, I should say that I’m not in the least bit familiar with graphic novels. That’s why I’m taking the challenge. The only ones I’ve read are by Edward Gorey, and those aren’t normal. This was a lot like the Gorey books, minus the humor. I like Gorey’s humor – his creepy illustrations are balanced out by it. The sometimes-creepy illustrations in this book are not. Some of them are downright disturbing, though not at all in a realistic/graphic way. More like in a conceptual way. Like there’s a picture of a street exploding, including non-bleeding severed body parts of a baby. Yeah.

I got no pleasure out of this book. A couple of the illustrations were pretty, but not stunning, and I just kept thinking What? the whole time. I don’t get it. Niffenegger dedicated this to her sisters, and spent fourteen years putting it together, so it makes me wonder if some of these pages were inside jokes. Either way, I’m really hoping to have better luck with the other graphic novels I chose.

Posted in 2009, Adult, Visual | Tagged | Leave a comment

Pretties, by Scott Westerfeld

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Thistle

PrettiesPretties is the second in the Uglies trilogy. In this book, Tally has finally become pretty, and is struggling to fit into the pretty world. She has everything she wants, but can’t shake the feeling that something’s not right. That feeling is confirmed when a visitor from her past arrives and helps jar her memory awake. With the help of her new boyfriend, Zane, Tally attempts to cure herself and her friends of their pretty-brains without letting the authorities know what they’re up to. The authorities don’t want people to stop being pretty-brained, and they’ll stop at nothing to keep their world in order.

Once again, I’ll just say the book is fantastic. It is every bit as good as Uglies, and I’ve already moved on to the third book in the trilogy. In the first book, the order and harmony of the supposedly-Utopian society is contrasted with the wildness and unpredictability of a “normal” city in order to show how not-right the engineered society is. In this book, when Tally ends up back in the wild, this time among primitive human beings, she learns more about the violent and destructive tendencies of people, and begins to understand why her society was engineered in the first place. The correct path becomes less clear – is it worth keeping people vapid and empty-headed in order to prevent violence and destruction? The message is not so simple anymore. It certainly makes Tally – and the reader – think.

I don’t want to say too much and give away spoilers. The book is fast, brilliantly written, and convincing. Westerfeld immersed the reader in the world of the uglies and then into the primitive camp of the runaways in Uglies, and now does the same with the world of the pretties. In the next book, I’ll get to learn about the lives and culture of the specials. Each of these territories is unique and has different cultural rules, linguistic dialects, and so on, and each is equally well-done. The trilogy is well worth the read.

Revisited in 2010: Loved just as much, but did not write any further review. This book is my favorite of the series.

Posted in 2009, 2010, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Ella Minnow Pea, by Mark Dunn

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Thistle

ella[For ease of reading this book review, every instance of the word “letter” will refer to notes people write to each other, and “character” will mean a letter of the alphabet. I won’t use the word “letter” to refer to the alphabet, nor will I use “character” to talk about the people in the book. It’ll be too confusing if I do.]

Eighteen-year-old Ella Minnow Pea lives off the South Carolina coast on the fictional island of Nollop. Nollop is so named after Nevin Nollop, creator of the immortal pangram: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The island’s peaceful existence is interrupted, however, when one of the tiles (“Z”) falls from Nollop’s monument, and the High Council decides that this is Mr. Nollop’s way of speaking from the dead. They banish the character Z from all talking and writing. Other characters quickly follow as more tiles fall – Q, J, D… Islanders begin to leave, either voluntarily or due to expulsion for using the illegal characters. As the population thins down and the government becomes ever more totalitarian (intercepting mail, randomly searching houses, seizing property under flimsy pretenses), the Council agrees to stop interpreting the monument’s crumbling as a sign from the now-worshiped Mr. Nollop, but only under one condition – the islanders must come up with another pangram, using 32 characters or less. They have a deadline by which to do so, and as more tiles plunge (eventually leaving only LMNOP), the few remaining inhabitants (including Ella) scramble to accomplish a seemingly impossible task.

This was a really fascinating book. The whole thing is told in a series of letters back and forth between different people. As the alphabet thins, the letters become more creative. There are lots of lyrical twists to get around using illegal characters (they are not permitted to substitute legal phonetic alternatives until only 16 characters remain on the sign). I imagine it would have been near-impossible for this book to be written without a good word processor and searches for characters in each section! Dunn does an amazing job of writing the letters and still making them sound natural despite missing more and more characters all the time. Only after some vowels are dropped, as well as some major consonants, do the letters become almost ridiculous in their unnatural language. The writing is brilliant for its difficulty level alone!

Beyond the writing, Ella Minnow Pea touches on two very important themes: the loss of freedom by censorship, and the dangers of governing by religion. Nollop quickly becomes a totalitarian state as people lose their freedom of speech. All books are removed, which closes libraries and affects teaching. People of all ages are seized, humiliated, flogged, and exiled for slips of the tongue. Neighbors turn each other in for past grudges. Some people are killed or driven into hiding. Islanders end up in total despair, some losing their minds, some turning to alcoholic binges, some (quite creepy) flogging themselves for just thinking an illegal character. Dunn shows how quickly a simple act of censorship can eventually disintegrate an entire society.

And then there’s the Council’s interpretation of Nollop-Almighty’s will. These five men choose to see what they want to see in events which, in all reality, have natural, non-spiritual causes. Some are just power-hungry (they get the best abandoned properties to themselves!), while some truly believe Mr. Nollop is lording over them from the land of the dead. Either way, they become completely oblivious to the welfare of their people. Humanity ceases to exist with them. There’s a good passage in one of Ella’s letters:

The high priests generate their alpha-elisions, then return to their lairs to eat what tasties were put there, while praying to Nollop, paying homage to Nollop, stooping, prostrating, salaaming to Nollop. Ignoring all humanity in their Nollop-apotheosis.

Let us say Nollip were all-hallow preeminent Omnipotentate, why – still – shut out all those with whom one shares this planet? Were we put here on this earth only to worship? Exalting Nollop is to erase all that is non-Nollopian upon this isle. To utterly erase an upright, meritorious people. Genoerasure.

(This excerpt, btw, is from a letter restricted to seventeen characters of the alphabet.)

Dunn seems to be saying, in parallel, that worship and divine interpretation alone does not save us, rather attention to our fellow man. We need a sense of humanity and charity to truly be good people.

My copy of this book quotes the Christian Science Monitor as saying, “There’s a whiff of a classic about Ella Minnow Pea.” I have to say I agree. Sure, I’ve heard reviewers say the characterization is a little shallow, but frankly, it’s hard to get a glimpse of anyone’s personality through a series of letters. The people and letters seemed natural enough to me, especially given the increasing limitations as time went by. At times, I wished there was some exposition, so that I could see the things going on behind the scenes, but by the end, it no longer mattered. I began to fill in that information for myself, to read between the gaps. The minor irritations in form are completely made up for by content, and I recommend the book wholeheartedly.

Posted in 2009, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments