What begins as a group hike ends up as a rain-soaked, blister-packed meet cute. Michael and Marnie have a mutual friend who's tired of hearing their love-lorn complaints and dire divorce stories so Cleo plans the trip of a lifetime trekking coast-to-coast along a rugged route in the north of England. In You Are Here, Nicholls paints a lovely and realistic portrait of two lonely people struggling to reconnect after each suffering painful divorces.
Marnie is a copy-editor currently at work on a painfully bad book of erotica that occasionally makes appearances in the narrative. She's not really bounced back after COVID and has adapted to working from home, and spends all her time disappearing into fiction. Friends have slowly drifted out of her life and she convinces herself that she's fine with that.
Nicholls captures her status beautifully and with respect;
"I, Marnie Walsh, aged thirty-eight, of Herne Hill, London, am lonely.
This was not seclusion or solitude or aloneness, this was the real thing, and the realisation came with shame. Because if popularity was the reward for being smart, cool, attractive, successful, then what did loneliness signify? She had never been cool, but she wasn't clueless either…If anything she tried too hard, a people-pleaser, though no one ever seemed that pleased (5)." This lovely and sad description of how loneliness can subsume a life is emblematic of Nichols' insight.
Michael is a heart-broken geography teacher who's beloved by his students. While at first irritated by the intrusiveness of others on his walk, he grows to enjoy an amusing rapport with Marnie. His character also contributes interesting facts, almost creating a travelogue, the descriptions of the landscape are evocative and rich, even though some of the characters comedically balk at the unasked for facts on flora and fauna.
Told in lively, often emotional chapters, this book will elicit hearty laughs. The witty jousting between Michael and Marnie is real and hilarious. Nichols demonstrates an uncanny ability to capture the charm and wit, as well as the pathos and pain, that make us human. These ingredients mix perfectly to create a rich and satisfying meal, enough to sustain the reader for the next leg of their own hike.
Patrons looking for additional David Nicholls content would be well-served by watching the Masterpiece Contemporary Production of David Nicholls Us. While I have yet to read his 2014 Booker Long Listed novel that it's based on, the BBC adaptation is poignant and funny.
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