The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal Memoir with Jigsaws is an original and brilliant work. Margaret Drabble weaves her own story into a history of games, in particular of jigsaws, which have offered her and many others "a soothing relief" from melancholy and depression. And as we learn that jigsaws began as dissected maps used as a teaching tool in the late eighteenth century; that the first board game, the Royal Game of the Goose, dates from the Renaissance and was attributed to Francesco de Medici, renowned melancholic; and that in America, following the stock market crash of October 1929, there was a boom in puzzle-manufacturing—she introduces us to her beloved Auntie Phyl: childhood visits to the house in Long Bennington on the Great North Road, their first trip to London together, the books they read and, above all, the jigsaws that they completed. She offers penetrating sketches of her parents, her siblings, and her children; she shares her thoughts on the importance of childhood play, on art and writing, on aging and memory. And she does so with her customary intelligence, energy, and wit. This is a memoir like no other.