Customer Reviews

The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws

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For someone who likes doing jigsaws this is a must read. It brought together so many topics of interest to me personally that it was a book I couldn't put down. As well as giving historical information about the origin of jigsaws, she tells us some of her personal history. She quotes from and analyses several other books that I have read or meant to read, such as "Life: a user's manual" by Georges Perec. Drabble includes a wealth of whimsical and exotic trivia in her beautifully written memoir.

If you are one of those people who think that nostalgia isn't what it used to be, this is the perfect book for you. This is a genre-defying mixture of memoir, personal reflection and history of jigsaws and children's games that only works because of the beautiful writing of Margaret Drabble that makes this a charming, quixotic, thoughtful and delightful book.

In her foreword to the book, Drabble explains that having decided that her 2006 novel 'The Sea Lady` would be her last fiction book, her intention was to explore the idea of producing a small, specialist book on the history of jigsaws which she envisaged sitting on the shelves of many a museum and gallery bookstore, and hopefully providing the ideal `'stocking filler'` type book for enthusiastic puzzlers. But at some point in the process, the book morphed into much more than that. Most overtly, it became a hybrid of this history and a memoir of her Auntie Phyl, a former school teacher with whom Drabble shared happy hours of jigsaw puzzling. But in the process, something deeper emerged.

It's well known that Drabble has suffered from periods of depression and that her recollections of her family and childhood are not all together happy (which she partly addressed in her novel 'The Peppered Moth`) and her strained relationship with her sister, A S Byatt has been well recorded. But in 'The Pattern in the Carpet` she focusses more on the happiness in the time with her Aunt as well as some wider thoughts of her own life, and exploring some of these images of a rural idyl of her youth without seeming to rake over old coals. The result is curiously uplifting and very personal.

It would be possible to criticise this book for not being one thing or the other. As a memoir, it is only partial, and as a history of jigsaws it is obviously deeply researched, but hardly an academic treatise on the subject due to the chatty style. Drabble goes off on little tangents and incorporates wider issues of games, mosaics, miniature art, children's fiction - I'm desperately trying not to liken it to a puzzler's attention to different aspects before returning to the whole as the jigsaw metaphor seems lazy to me, but that's what it's like. Incidentally, she also explores the use of the jigsaw metaphor too!

On jigsaws, what makes this so charming is that Drabble comes across as an enthusiastic fan rather than a fanatical enthusiast. She explores the mention of jigsaws in literature and portrayal in art as well as the development of the jigsaw from `dissected maps' to images of art. Curiously though, she doesn't explore the issues of mass production of puzzles. She references an impressive range of literature, art and research material, but it's never dry, and never preachy - albeit that if you are looking for a pure memoir, there's a LOT on jigsaws in it. Former teacher, Auntie Phyl would doubtless have admired her efforts at imparting learning.

For good measure, there are joyous snippets, like the derivation of the phrase 'Goody Two-Shoes`. And there can be few books on the history of any subject that gives quite so much kudos to a London taxi driver named Kevin.

It's a gentle book, recalling the charms of earlier days. It will appeal to puzzlers and non-puzzlers alike (I fall into the second category but am now wondering what I have missed all these years).

Margaret Drabble is not afraid to write; and in recent years her work has become more direct, with just enough artifice to make a tale hang together. This book is to be sipped slowly,chapter by chapter, when a person feels the need to turn off CNN and sit down and have tea and conversation with a thoughtful, articulate friend. No crumpets are needed to accompany the earl grey, since her reminiscences and researched tidbits about jigsaw puzzles, human nature in general, and her family in particular, are themselves soooo sweet, soooo true.

This should have been excellent. Margaret Drabble is a well-respected author with many books to her credit. I found this one meandering and not terribly well-researched. Contrary to other reviewers, I found it very easy to put down. It didn't seem to go anywhere. The brief chapters meander through visits to see mosaics and tiled patterns from ancient times. Here and there are references to members of her family whom she does not seem to like very much. She recounts people in her family and in the British Royal Family who took up needlepoint, but none of it is very well connected to the theme of the book.
I would have been interested to read either a detailed autobiography or a history of jigsaw puzzles, but not a pallid attempt at both of these genres under a single heading.