‘Mug-up’ an Ogilvie companion Compendium details Maine author’s work

A MUG-UP WITH ELISABETH: A COMPANION FOR READERS OF ELISABETH OGILVIE, by Melissa Hayes & Marilyn Westervelt, Down East Books, Camden, 323 pages, $17.95.

Melissa Hayes discovered the novels of Elisabeth Ogilvie in her local library in the early 1990s. She loved the Cushing author so much that within a few years she had collected all 46 of Ogilvie’s books.

Ogilvie, 84, was born and raised on Boston’s south shore, but summered as a girl on Criehaven Island, south of Matinicus. She began writing about life on the island as a teen-ager. Her first novel, “High Tide at Noon,” was published in 1944 and her most recent, “The Day Before Winter,” came out four years ago.

These books are the first and last in Ogilvie’s best-known series set on Bennett’s Island, a place nearly identical to Criehaven. In all, she wrote nine books about the inhabitants of that island, which spanned several generations. Ogilvie also authored the Jennie series – three historical novels about a Scottish woman who flees her native land for the coast of Maine at the end of the 18th century. She also wrote mysteries and novels for young adults.

In 1997, Hayes and Marilyn Westervelt of Tenants Harbor started a fan newsletter for Ogilvie readers called A Mug-up With Elisabeth. The companion book of the same name includes material previously published in the newsletter, including a glossary of Maine expressions. The book, however, expands on topics not covered as fully in the quarterly publication or on the Web site, www.mugup.com.

The companion’s extensive appendixes include alphabetical listings of Ogilvie’s characters, their comforts and pastimes, as well as lists of the boats, locations and flora and fauna in her novels. The writers add some of the prolific author’s early work, including a poem published in the literary magazine of North Quincy High School in 1934, when Ogilvie was a senior.

The bulk of “A Mug-up With Elisabeth,” however, is devoted to the places where Ogilvie lived and wrote. That, according to the authors, is because a sense of place is so strong in Ogilvie’s books it functions almost like a character. Individual chapters, including detailed maps, are devoted to three islands off Maine’s coast – Gay’s, Criehaven and Matinicus – as well as to Scotland and the Isle of Lewis.

Hayes and Westervelt summarize the plots of all 30 of Ogilvie’s adult novels, her 15 works for juveniles and her autobiography, “My World Is an Island.” Chapters explore the themes in her work, profile major characters and quote articles Ogilvie has written over the years about her writing process.

The companion is at the same time a fascinating and frustrating read. The minutiae the authors list and the depth with which they explore Ogilvie’s novels rival the way young readers today debate Harry Potter books and college students argued over J.R.R. Tolkien 30 years ago. Hayes and Westervelt’s love of and admiration for Ogilvie’s work jumps off the page. It is clear that they know these novels and the writer inside and out.

They appear to be more comfortable, however, writing about Ogilvie’s characters than about the author herself. The biographical chapters on Ogilvie’s life raise more questions than they answer. For more than 50 years, Ogilvie lived with author Dot Simpson, a native of Criehaven. Beginning in 1944, the two spent summers on Gay’s Island off Pleasant Point in Thomaston and winters in Cushing.

Hayes and Westervelt go into more detail about Ogilvie’s relationship with her brothers than they do about the one bond that dominated the writer’s life. Simpson, who was 14 years older than Ogilvie and married to a lobsterman, died in December 1998 at the age of 95. Their relationship is referred to as a “friendship,” yet the word seems woefully inadequate to explain the bond between these two women.

For native Mainers, the information outlined about lobstering and life on the unpredictable Gulf of Maine may seem simplistic and unnecessary. Hayes and Westervelt, however, report that more than 400 Ogilvie readers in 41 states subscribe to their newsletter.

“A Mug-up With Elisabeth,” however, can be read and enjoyed by native Mainers who have followed Ogilvie’s career since the publication of the first Bennett’s Island book. It also can help readers who have never eaten a lobster or dipped their toes in the icy Atlantic understand that Ogilvie’s world is a real place peopled by the author’s vivid imagination.