Unspoken: Olivetti by Allie Millington

In June 2024’s Introvert Book Club selection, a vintage typewriter intervenes to help a family – especially uncommunicative, word-loving Ernest – cope with troubles.

According to Carl Jung’s personality theory, introverts treasure the inward world, the realm of thoughts, dreams, unspoken hopes and nightmares.  We’re prone to dramas that take place largely in our heads.  In her 2024 middle-grade novel Olivetti, Allie Millington offers a brilliant, winsome and fascinating vehicle for representing emotional conflicts that barely show up in the social arena. 

One protagonist is troubled seventh grader Ernest, who takes comfort studying words in the Oxford English Dictionary alone on the roof of his apartment building.  The other protagonist is Olivetti, a cranky old typewriter who has been the repository of feelings and imaginings for Ernest’s mother, who has unaccountably disappeared. 

Olivetti comes to life by typing back to Ernest what he knows of Beatrice, his mother, thus helping the family get back together.