Sunday, April 19, 2009




St Cuthbert's Churchyard, Edinburgh
More photos from the same walk on Crafty Green Poet here.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

This is a wonderful book, extremely clever in both concept and execution! It is set in a fictional island whose residents are gradually deprived of the use of certainl letters of the alphabet. The story is told through letters, written by residents of the island, which naturally don't contain the banned letters. The language therefore becomes more and more restricted. The whole narrative is a reflection on the insidiousness of censorship and the way that censorship and wider political repression affect people's lives, how people react and how they adapt to censorship. A vital and entertaining read for our times.