Little Gems Are All Around You

I’m not talking about lettuce

Little gems are all around you, but you don’t know where they are.

Said my mum to me in the library. Then she went off, eyes glazed, muttering, as is the way of lunatics.

She left me to find my way to the children’s section.

How to tell a gem? Was it the cover, the title, the pictures, the blurb, the thumbed pages of the book?

Nowadays, I go to Hatchards on Piccadilly because I like a bookshop with a sweeping staircase and deep green carpet, and I know the gems are there, but where?

There’re shelves and shelves of books. You can’t ask a salesperson, because one person’s gem is another person’s pebble. And well-meaning as it is, I’ve been cruelly disappointed at reading what a friend promised to be a tour de force, only to find it a colossal bore. I’ve closed the book and reconsidered the taste of that friend who I once thought of as discerning.

There’s a great column in the Saturday supplement of The Times newspaper. It revisits a novel that was once of prominence but has fallen into obscurity. They feature one novel a week. But that’s only 52 potential gems in a year…

No, you are on your own in the pursuit of gems. You must listen to your instinct, have your radar always tuned, your antennae a-quiver.

Just last year, a gem fell into my lap: The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearn by Brian Moore. I can’t remember how we discovered each other but I adored Judith Hearn. Have you read it? Here, borrow my copy.

But see this: Judith Hearn was published in 1955. 1955! Where has Judith been all my life? How the heck have we never bumped into each other? God, there must be so many gems. Will I ever discover them all?

After giving gems much thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that they hide deliberately.

It is all part of the great yin and yang of the literary universe. Scarcity is what makes a gem a gem. If gems were in plain sight, no hiding, no need for hunting, they would diminish, their lustre would dull.

It’s the elusiveness of gems, the frisson of not knowing when one will fall into your lap, that makes them so magical.

In short, gems give life hope.

No matter the trials and tribulations, a good book is sure to come.

And that’s a brilliant thing.