The Pattern in the Carpet - Audiobook

Synopsis: This is a beautifully written and deeply personal book on the jigsaw puzzle and the part it plays in the puzzle of its distinguished author's life. It is a mix of memoir, jigsaw history and the strange delights of puzzling. James Boswell described the 'innocent soothing relief from melancholy' of playing draughts, and Margaret Drabble - among countless others - has found a similar solace from assembling jigsaws. In "The Pattern in the Carpet", she describes the history of this uniquely British form of meditation, from its earliest incarnation as a dissected map, used as a teaching tool in the late eighteenth century, to the other cut-outs and mosaics that have amused children and adults from Roman times until today.Woven carefully through her account are the author's intimate memories of her Auntie Phyl - her childhood visits to the house in Long Bennington on the Great North Road, their first visit to London together, the books they read and, above all, the jigsaws that they completed. The resulting book is an original and moving personal history about ageing and the authenticity of memory; about the importance of childhood play; and, how we rearrange objects into new patterns to make sense of our past and ornament our present. It will delight and transport its readers.

Review: It didn't delight or transport me I'm afraid, it was a slog to get through it. Perhaps it was the subject matter, I do like jigsaws and have had my fair share of rainy days (particularly on holiday) when they have come to my rescue but I think you need to be an absolute jigsaw fanatic to truly appreciate the amount of detail and research that's gone into this book. My mind wandered off frequently, I made mental shopping lists and calculated the cost of putting in a new bathroom, all when I should have been listening to the story. The book is not just about jigsaws, it's about all manner of ancient crafts and pastimes .. tapestry included, which should have been of interest to me but sadly wasn't. Running alongside it is the tale of Margaret's Auntie Phyl, herself a jigsaw enthusiast and here again I was ever so slightly bored. I did find the sections about her more interesting but not much. I can see that she was of immense interest to the family but to everyone else she was fairly ordinary .. it's a bit like me telling you about my Auntie Rose and her latest DIY plans ... you wouldn't give a fig would you? I love writers memoirs and I don't particularly care if there aren't a lot of bells and fireworks but something has to grab your attention and connect and that just didn't happen here.

I hated the narration, and maybe this is what made the book seem so insufferably dull, Margaret sounded a little bit snobby and stuffy at times .. which I'm sure she's not. Ridiculous things annoyed me like the pronunciation of Kaffe Fassett's name (the textile artist) ... Margaret is a bit of a fan and has done some of his designs in tapestry and she would have known that he pronounces his first name as Kayf .. but the narrator was making him sound like a high street teashop and his name was mentioned so often that I began .. rather childishly .. yelling at the CD player.

Margaret has an interesting family, her first husband was Clive Swift the actor (Hyacinth Bucket's husband in 'Keeping Up Appearances') her second husband is the writer Michael Holroyd .. whose book 'A Strange & Eventful History' I have on the shelf, her sister is the novelist A.S. Byatt and her son is Joe Swift the TV gardener and of course Margaret herself has written over fifteen novels (one of which is on the 1001 list) and eight works of non-fiction. I would much rather have heard about all of that ... and there were snippets which made me long to know more. But perhaps she wants to keep her private life (that which doesn't involve Auntie Phyl that is) private and of course that's totally understandable, it's just I needed something more to spark my interest. Apparently this was going to be a small stocking filler type book on jigsaws which then grew as Margaret researched it ... now that book I could have probably read with interest. Jigsaws can be quietly entertaining but I found reading about them was not.

As a little tribute to Margaret and all her research and to show that I bear her no animosity, even though she kept me from listening to much better books, I thought I'd include a picture of a jigsaw (alas .. not done by me.) I visited my father-in-law last week and he had just finished a puzzle that we bought him for Christmas and before he crunched it all up into the box, I took a pic.