PB Sale for Playful Word Novel
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 7/23/2001
A first novel by playwright Mark Dunn, which he describes in a jaw-breaking subtitle as A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable, has been enthusiastically bought, following a heated auction for paperback rights, by Anchor editor-in-chief Marty Asher, who describes it as "the most original, completely unexpected and delightful piece of fiction I've read in a long, long time." Its title is Ella Minnow Pea (you have to say it aloud to get the drift), and it's about a family living on an island that is also home to the original author of the pangram "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps over the Lazy Dog." A statue honors this remarkable man and his great sentence, but, unfortunately, the letters start to fall off, one by one, and Ella's family has to run around and find another phrase that contains the remaining letters, while they still have any to communicate with. The book was bought for hardcover by the small San Francisco house MacAdam/Cage, which plans to publish in October, and the paperback auction was handled by Michelle Rubin at Writers House. Anchor will do its paperback in fall 2002.
