‘You Are Here’ is a really apt title as it really does get a grip on you and won’t let you go until the final page. It’s a book I still think about over a year after reading it for the first time, and have listened to it on audiobook so many times after my first read.

David Nicholls, who also wrote the phenomenal ‘One Day’ (2009) and equally brilliant ‘Us’ (2014) is at the top of his game again. The two central characters, Michael and Marnie, are thrown together on the epic 190-mile coast to coast walk with a group of friends. Neither of them really want to go, both having become quite solitary people, sometimes even lonely. The interesting thing here is that solitude, aloneness are not described as the enemy or the thing to overcome as they often are in fiction, but are described as things that have their positives and benefits. However, they’re on the precipice of loneliness, through their own self-isolation, Marnie cumulatively over time while Michael has deliberately isolated himself after the break-up of his marriage and a terrible incident that occurred a couple of years before.

The walk gives them the chance to get to know each other, to discuss their pasts and they begin to develop a friendship which may have the seeds of something more. This, combined with some hilarious one-liners and brilliant descriptions and comparisons (Nicholls is king of the perfect simile), some very average accommodation and Nicholls’s understanding of characters and how to make them bounce off the page make for a fantastic read.

And speaking of ‘One Day’, if you haven’t got time to read it, watch the Netflix adaptation – the best adaptation I’ve seen.  

By Jonathan Freckleton, Library and Learning Adviser