The Ogre of Oglefort

The ogre of Oglefort is a terrible ogre. A massive, smelly, mean and horrible ogre. So when some rather mild monsters are dispatched to deal with him, they do not feel optimistic. But he has taken a princess captive and so clearly, something must be done.

The reluctant adventurers (hag, wizard, troll and orphan) all have a little something of their own to worry about as well. The Hag of the Dribble has lost her familiar, and has sort of temporarily adopted Ivo, a love-starved, but stout-hearted orphan, as her new familiar; the wizard isn't really that good at magic, but his mother firmly tells him otherwise, quite regularly; the troll longs for the vanishing woodlands of his home.

It turns out that everyone -- the terrible ogre included -- is in some way longing for home, and the ways in which these various longings are satisfied is really, well, satisfying. This is a book you put down with a sigh of contentment, that the world is not just returned to normal, but is in fact a little better than when it started, and that everyone has found a happiness they thought was completely beyond recovery.

That's enough to make anyone smile. Even an ogre.


THE OGRE OF OGLEFORT is one of the last books Eva Ibbotson published before she died in October 2010. And it's a book that makes that loss cut even more keenly, because you know no more such stories will be written by this marvelous author.