As someone who can get a cardigan caught on the smoothest surface and only needs to be in the same postcode as a glass of red wine to find a stain on my, once white, dress I read Claire Wilcox’s book in awe. She knows how to handle everything with care, from lace to centuries-old costumes to glass buttons to causes for nostalgia or grief.

Patch Work is about Wilcox’s life as a curator at the V&A, the jobs that led her there, her study of art and photography, her children, her parents and many unnamed friends and loves who have stitched her together. The book is hard to describe without metaphor, feeling as it does like a quilt, though one that ought to be held with a care more appropriate to bone china, or like delicate archive notes but not of a sort that require white gloves for one needs to feel the pages and their subject matter beneath one’s fingertips. The sections are brief and exquisitely titled, the seams exposed, yet fluid.

I loved Patch Work and want everyone to have read it and am very grateful to the customer who recommended it, the same customer who mentioned some months ago that I might enjoy The Women In Black by Madeleine St. John. I suspected that this meant I would adore it and I do, a novel about a group of women working in a department store, young and intelligent Lisa who has just got a job there and is using this first independence to change her name, alluring Magda who runs the exclusive Model Gowns department, Patty whose husband pays her no attention and Fay whose boyfriends’ attentions are rather dull.

Madeleine St. John handles her characters with the aplomb that Magda does couture dresses. I think of it as Australian Barbara Pym (with fewer curates and no need for galoshes).*

When I opened Everything Will Swallow You by Tom Cox, it was, to quote Joseph Heller, love at first sight. The first chapter title had me grinning, the opening page introduced the voice of Eric, who has a lot to say to his best friend Carl, and within moments there were references to Rosamond Lehmann and PJ Harvey.

Eric himself believes in love at first sight, though he acknowledges a wide margin for error in a life spent honing his observational skills; in one month alone, he fell in love with sixteen people. My initial impression was proven correct: love triumphed.

Eric collects, and sometimes sells, stuff. Antiques, bells, vinyl… Carl cooks extremely spicy curry, devours Sylvia Townsend Warner and is an expert in knitting and crochet. In some ways, he is like a longtail cast-on, a sturdy method for establishing the initial loops from which one knits. In others, he is unknowable; he showed up one day, moved in with Eric and their lives became the richer for it.

Everything Will Swallow You is a gift. It will indeed swallow you up in a warm hug and consume your days. In June, we are devoting Independent Bookshop Week to its author Tom Cox and are particularly looking forward to a discussion with him about this, his latest novel. Please bring your niche seventies and eighties band knowledge and best knitwear. Anyone referring to ‘vinyls’ will not be admitted.

In A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler too it is the minutiae and the quotidian which are of interest to Barnaby. In his misspent youth he developed a habit of breaking into houses but it was the occupants’ photographs, diaries and letters to which he was drawn. Now he is absolutely someone you can trust – indeed you can hire him for any job and he will be there, do it well and listen attentively while you talk again about the quilt you are making – though he may be unable to resist a glance through your wall calendar while he puts up a new shelf.

Alongside these absolutely kind and beautifully spun stories, I have been pulled into Patchwork by Kate Evans, a graphic biography (with some fictionalised touches) of Jane Austen. There is an intricate coverlet on display at Chawton Cottage, a creation comprising thousands of tiny diamonds in many patterned materials made by several Austens: Jane, her sister and her mother. This creation is threaded through the pages of Evans’ book, with pieces of the coverlet sometimes separate sometimes stitched together while Evans explores who Austen was, how her characters came to be and how her novels changed as she did.

I am looking forward to going a little further back with Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. Like Claire Wilcox, the archaeologist grew up with a mother who liked to sew and a part of everyday life became a source of academic fascination and discovery. She examines what we can find out from the facts ‘lurking in seemingly grubby little scraps of ancient cloth and mundane textile tools,’ evidence often neglected in historical research or dismissed as ‘women’s work.’

Before then, and with hats off and an apology to my nephew for not doing so sooner, I am trying my hand at millinery through The Hatmakers by Tamzin Merchant. Craftsmanship in this world is particularly special: Cordelia comes from a line of hatmakers, currently charged with making one for the king which will improve his concentration, much needed given that he can’t be bothered to engage in the business of ruling and the country is about to be invaded. Cordelia’s father, Prospero, is away searching for a particular feather needed to imbue the hat with great power but when his ship, The Jolly Bonnet, is sunk, it seems that he is lost forever…

You know how much I love a hat. Now I just need one with the power to create more hours for reading.

For tiny craftspeople, may I insist on the importance of two picture books: Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen in which a young girl finds an inexhaustible box of yarn and gets creative until the whole town is covered and Mavis the Bravest by Lu Fraser, illustrated by Sarah Warburton in which a nervous, knitting chicken must find the courage to investigate a strange noise in the night…

May your weekend be full of yarns,**
Lizzie

 *Fellow Pym fans, I must note that I have finally read Civil To Strangers. Good to be reminded how not to handle either clothing or a tricky situation by the moment when a spurned lover throws the sweater she was knitting for her beloved into the fire. So wasteful, so malodorous.

**Somehow I am going to piece this whole newsletter together without mentioning Ann Patchett. I am as outraged as you are.