Review: You Are Here by David Nicholl

You Are Here
David Nicholls
Sceptre
2024, 352p
Read via my local library

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: Sometimes you need to get lost to find your way.

Marnie is stuck.
Stuck working alone in her London flat, stuck battling the long afternoons and a life that often feels like it’s passing her by.

Michael is coming undone.
Reeling from his wife’s departure, increasingly reclusive, taking himself on long, solitary walks across the moors and fells.

When a persistent mutual friend and some very English weather conspire to bring them together, Marnie and Michael suddenly find themselves alone on the most epic of walks and on the precipice of a new friendship.

But can they survive the journey?

I am very much in the minority over this book, it appears.

I thought it’d be fun from the synopsis. I am not a hiker or long distance walker but I actually enjoy reading about things like that and watching YouTube videos on people who hike the PCT or the Appalachian trail or whatever. The other night I watched a guy’s video of him summiting Everest and that was fascinating and also terrifying and also…..look, not going to lie a little gross at the absolute disgusting state that the hiking season leaves the mountain in. Seeing all the rubbish and stuff everywhere (a Coke bottle! On the summit ridge! Who on Earth is taking a Coke bottle up there?!) is definitely like being slapped with the cold reality of the selfishness of humanity. I mean there’s also all the dead bodies and human waste as well but….yeah. For some reason, the Coke bottle got to me. Anyway, back to the topic, I thought I’d find this fun and cute and interesting. Especially as Marnie isn’t a hiker (she basically has barely left her apartment since before covid) but unfortunately, I just didn’t really like much about this. I found both Michael and Marnie’s misery were getting to me and this is hard because both of them are going through very real things but I’m just not sure I’m really into the misery fiction genre anymore. I like the idea of a slow story and people working through their trauma but…. this book did not make me feel like anyone was actually really doing that. And their bickering wasn’t cute, it was super tedious and I didn’t find Marnie at all funny.

I just didn’t enjoy any of the characters. Michael and Marnie share a mutual friend named Cleo and they even met once, like thirteen years ago but they don’t know each other. Cleo is really pushy and not in a gentle way that feels like she’s just encouraging them to try and embrace things that might make them enjoy their lives a bit more or work towards healing themselves, but in ways that feel a bit over the top and honestly, kind of mean. It’s supposed to be a group hike but one person pulls out and another one (that Marnie is supposed to be kind of ‘set up’ with – the mutual friend invites like a male friend presumably for Marnie and a female friend for Michael, the female friend for Michael is the one that pulls out) is incredibly obnoxious, like over the top city finance bro (except he’s a pharmacist). Yet Marnie persists with this guy, like girl, please. She and Michael don’t originally hit it off but eventually they find a bit of common ground and even after Marnie could’ve left the hike, she chooses to continue on with Michael lugging her million pound backpack with her laptop and 12 pairs of pants and her three dinner dresses.

The parts I enjoyed most about the book where before Michael and Marnie even met – when Michael was interacting with his school kids (he teaches geography) and when Marnie was musing on her introverted lifestyle. Both of them had had relationship breakdowns but for very different reasons so in a way they did have an understanding I think, of the place the other was at in life in a way. Although Michael doesn’t really tell Marnie everything, especially when they get to a point where he really should have….? Which I found frustrating.

I soldiered on with this but I wasn’t rewarded as I really, really disliked the ending. I see people tagging this as romance and I guess it…technically…? loosely…? fits the description in a way (we are to assume) but I didn’t find any of this romantic.

5/10

Book #109 of 2024

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