With the advent of the ‘dissected map’ (credited to John Spilsbury in 1766), the lines between an educational occupation and an amusement were blurred forever. Maps mounted on mahogany board and cut into pieces with a marquetry saw, laid the foundation for the 10,000-piece cardboard puzzles of today. Her quest to understand the many aspects of the jigsaw puzzle finds Drabble assembling an original Spilsbury Map of Europe Divided into Kingdoms in the Map Room of the British Library, most thrillingly, without gloves. Here, Drabble muses on the reasons for her pleasure in jigsaws, partly acknowledging the relief it brings to her ‘word-based’ brain, and confiding that for her ‘writing is a protection, a cure, an affliction’.

The consolation of reading is not dismissed, however. Drabble shares her own book list, from childhood primers to a love of John Clare and an intricate appreciation of Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual, with ‘the jigsaw as a central metaphor for the tragic futility of human endeavour and the tedium of existence’. Drabble is unafraid of the jigsaw as metaphor, indeed she explores every possible aspect of the puzzle, even, with the help of Kevin the taxi-driver, hunting down a subterranean mosaic. She looks at the idea of the puzzle in nature, finding Shackleton’s descriptions of pack-ice as ‘a giant and interminable jigsaw puzzle’ a starting point for considerations of natural and unnatural phenomena. If the connections are occasionally obscure, the pleasure of the book is in enjoying Drabble’s company. In her discreet and elegant way, she has assembled a puzzle from her own life and invited us to share some quiet moments on the solution.

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