YOU ARE HERE
BY DAVID NICHOLLS
Published: 23rd April 2024
HODDER & STOUGHTON
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?
A weekend spent wrapped up in bed with You Are Here was reading at its best. The lack of distractions, coupled with David Nicholls’ evocative portrayal of Marnie and Michael allowed them to spring forth from the pages. Their ensuing journey formed an emotive, engrossing screenplay in my mind.
Traversing the vast, vivid landscape, feeling the icy rain working its way through walking gear, and experiencing every emotion through each leg of the duo’s arduous walk, I became utterly captivated with them both, as individuals, and as new friends.
What David Nicholls manages to achieve, time and again, is to make the reader lose sight of everything else apart from what is happening in the words he has written; he has certainly done it with You Are Here. I emerged from my cocoon at the end, bereft at the loss of my new friends Marnie and Michael. Hopefully, their story lives on.
Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and David Nicholls for the eARC received via NetGalley; this is my unbiased review.
5 / 5
Emotive and engrossing; transported me right to the heart of the story