Richard Gottlieb

A memoir about puzzles and games; Author Margaret Drabble writes a biography and a history

You game and puzzle lovers our there may want to check out well known novelist, Margaret Drabble’s, new memoir The Pattern in the Carpet: a Personal History with Jigsaws. The book, according to the New York Times review, “…started out as a straightforward history of jigsaw puzzles, and then evolved into, as she puts it into a memoir that uses jigsaw puzzles to tell her story.

Is the book good? It’s really hard to tell because the reviewer, Michael Cunningham, is not real big on puzzles.   Here is how he puts it in an interview: Cunningham…”says he doesn’t have much patience for jigsaws. “I find them to be among the least interesting — well, in fact, the most actually depressing — of all puzzles and games….”’

So the reviewer, Cunningham, has little use for puzzles but the author, Drabble, obviously does. She feels that puzzles are all about restoring order. We start with a pile of pieces and slowly and meticulously reconstruct the picture and as a result, order is restored. 

She also sees the importance of puzzles in their ability to bring people (families and /or friends) together in reconstructing order. In a world that is currently badly in need of reconstructing, jigsaw puzzles may not be a bad place to begin. 

Posted by Richard Gottlieb on September 20, 2009 | Comments (2)