The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws

In The Pattern in the Carpet the award-winning and beloved writer Margaret Drabble explores her own family story alongside the history of her favourite childhood pastime – the jigsaw. The result is an original and moving personal history about remembrance, growing older, the importance of play and the ways in which we make sense of our past by ornamenting our present.

Reviews of The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws

A mature overview of a lifetime spent fitting objects together in various ways before breaking them up and beginning all over again * * Guardian * * Touchingly human and often wise . . . a book with such enthusiasm for its subject matter that it makes you long to embark on your own jigsaw * * Telegraph * * Throws poignant light on the difficult jigsaw of human life – and on how to shed harmful thought patterns and reassemble them into something less destructive — Anita Sethi * * Independent * * Part memoir, part rigorously researched historical perspective, Drabble's book is a multi-layered look at jigsaw puzzles and their role through the ages for society, individuals and herself; it's also a charming homage to Drabble's beloved Auntie Phyl, who passed her lifelong love of jigsaws on to Drabble * * Publishers Weekly * * Gently illuminating . . . An evocative study in memory and the techniques used to reconstruct it . . . A dab hand at fiction and editorship comes through once more, this time with a chockablock memoir fitted under the rubric of pastimes * * Kirkus Reviews * *