The Pattern in the Carpet

My review of The Pattern in the Carpet by Margaret Drabble is out in the Christian Science Monitor. Here’s an excerpt:

Margaret Drabble’s new book, The Pattern in the Carpet, as she explains on the first page, is a cross between a memoir and a history of the jigsaw puzzle. It looks at first like a cozy book, full of idyllic reminiscences of a slower and more rural way of life. And in fact, it describes how Drabble’s Auntie Phyl “taught us to peg rugs, and to sew, and to do French knitting, and to make lavender bags, and to thread bead necklaces, and to bake rock cakes and coconut fingers, and to play patience.”

Fans of jigsaw puzzles will learn where they appear in the work of Jane Austen and how they developed from the “dissected maps” once mounted on mahogany to teach children geography.

But take care before you send this book to your own kindly aunt. Under the comforting surface is something much more disquieting.

I’ve also reviewed Drabble’s novels The Radiant Way and The Witch of Exmoor, and I’ve discussed her a few times in my blog.