[BenG]

Ella Minnow Pea is a novel about words and wordplay.
The subtitle calls it "A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable." A lipogram is a story written without using a chosen letter or letters. Epistolary means the story is told using the letters the characters write to one another. It's progressive because as the story goes on more and more letters are banned by the government.

One more definition, a pangram is a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet.

The hero, Ella Minnow Pea (say it out loud to get the pun), lives in a small island nation called Nollop about 21 miles off of the coast of South Carolina.
There is no mass media or telephone service so letter writing is the preferred means of communication using Pony Express. Over the years the country’s leadership has sought to uplift its black and white citizens through almost monastic devotion to liberal arts education and scholarship, effectively elevating language to national art form, while relegating modern technology to the status of avoidable nuisance. Formerly Utopianna, the country’s name was changed in 1904 to honor native son Nevin Nollop, the author of the popular pangram sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

In the midst of the capital is a monument honoring Nevin Nollop with his famous phrase written across the top. When the story opens, the tile with the letter Z falls off the monument and the leaders decide that it is Nollop communicating from beyond the grave and ban the letter z and words using it from written and spoken language. Corporal punishment and or exile is the penalty for breaking the law. Some are true believers, some use the law for revenge or material gain.

The letters which make up the book use fewer and fewer letters and more tiles fall and more letters are banned.

The wordplay is central to the book, but there is also a charming and thoughtful story about the gradual loss of liberty one letter at a time.
And the letters are amusing because everyone tries to write literary letters that tend to be somewhat flowery.