Review: You Are Here

You Are Here by David Nicholls
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Michael is a geography teacher. Eighteen months ago his wife Natasha left him and moved back in with her parents. Since then he has become a bit of a hermit, only happy in his own company, and he spends evenings and weekends walking alone. One of his oldest friends, and now boss, is Cleo who constantly nags him to go out, to meet people, to try dating, but despite being lonely, Michael still isn't over his marriage. When Michael tells Cleo he intends to do the 190 mile coast-to-coast walk devised by Alfred Wainwright she persuades him that it would be fun to have some company, at least for the first couple of days, Cleo and her husband and teenage son, a couple of other people etc.

Marnie is a divorced copy-editor. Self-employed, since her divorce she has noticed that friends have drifted away as they start families so that now she rarely sees anyone or goes anywhere. After a depressing collage of her photos for the year reveals no social activity whatsoever, Marnie admits to herself that she is lonely and resolves to agree to any opportunity to socialise when it next occurs. So when Cleo invites her to join her, her husband, and Marnie's godson on a three day walk she agrees.

Things go wrong right from the start. Cleo's husband and one of the other guests can't make it. The weather is foul, and Cleo's godson decides he would rather stay in his hotel room and play video games. One of the other guests decides he'll just take a taxi to the next hotel on their walk and take advantage of the bar. Eventually, all the other guests make their excuses and leave early, but Marnie, perhaps because she can't afford to change her ticket, decides she'll continue for the rest of the three days.

Despite having very little in common, Michael and Marnie do share a wry sense of humour, and as they walk they find it easy to confide in each other big feelings about love, having children, death, etc.

I was going to say I've never read a David Nicholls book (although I've seen a few films of his books) but GR reliably tells me I've read One Day and I'm pretty sure I've also read Starter for Ten, but this book is very different to both of them. For a start it features a couple firnly in middle age (thirty-eight and forty-two I believe). It also goes into a great deal of detail about the coast-to-coast walk which made me (a dedicated couch potato) dream of making the journey, even the bits where it rained like Armageddon and Marnie couldn't stop swearing at Michael as she crawled up hills.

My lasting impression is that this book has something of the Alan Bennett about it - couldn't say why, but I do.

Gentle, sad, witty, funny, grim, touching it's got everything. Loved it.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review,

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