How do you write an autobiography without referring to almost anyone else in your life? In The Pattern in the Carpet, Margaret Drabble has done just that, using her interest in jigsaw puzzles to create a ‘hybrid’ book, part memoir, part history. The device allows Drabble to reveal more about herself than any exposé or biographer’s dissection, whilst leading us through the museums and galleries of the world in the search for puzzle trivia. The mildest of pastimes is Drabble’s ostensible subject, but the book is lively with an anguish only partly alleviated by the correct placing of a cardboard shape.
As a child, Margaret Drabble would lie on her back and contemplate infinity ‘quite faint with my own stupidity and desire’. The vastness of space, of large numbers, the fear of chaos, drives her to seek order where she could find it.
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