In You Are Here we follow two people, Marnie and Michael who are flung together by circumstance on an ill-fated walk through the Lake District. Both of them are around the age of 40 and both of them are grappling with challenges in their private lives- bruised by break-ups and careworn of life. And that was the precise amount of context I required to pick this book up. I love hiking, and I’ve been harboring a dream to tramp over the moors in England someday. I also love love, and this love story with its “will they, won’t they” teasing kept me on the edge of my seat, rooting for them. Yet, the most intriguing aspect of this love story is that it explores early midddle-aged heartbreak, loss, love and loneliness.

Nicholls paints vivid landscapes of the moors and hills of northern England. Whether our protagonists are cold to the bone and sopping wet from the rain as they trudge along the countryside, or whether it’s a sun soaked picture perfect sky blue day, the descriptions of the settings feel visceral. Very quickly I became acustomed to the rhythms of the days out walking on the hills and the nights spent inside some small town hotel, or a quaint bed and breakfast. For the escapism that reading affords this was a pretty sweet journey.

Nicholls’ screenwriting ability shines through the patently British banter and comedic timing in the dialouges between Marnie and Michael. You Are Here delivers humour but not at the expense of poignancy. It is a bittersweet story but it left me feeling warm-hearted and hopeful.

Here are some of my highlights.

“The risks involved in romantic love, the potential for hurt and betrayal and indignity, far outweighed the consolations.”

“It’s true I do have time and freedom and I love it, sometimes. But the notion that I should be ‘making the most of it’, travelling the world or out every night, there’s a kind of tyranny in that too, that life has to be full, like your life’s a hole that you have to keep filling, a leaky bucket, and not just fulfilled but seen to be fulfilled. “You don’t have kids, why can’t you speak Portuguese?” Do I have to have hobbies and projects and lovers? Do I have to excel? Can’t I just be happy, or unhappy, just mess about and read and waste time and be unfulfilled by myself?”

“It would be nice to use a familiar toilet but her most pressing commitment was to an open packet of feta that would need to be eaten by Thursday, and she couldn’t let her decisions be swayed by half a block of brined cheese.”

“There is who we want to be, she thought, and there is who we are. As we get older the former gives way to the latter, and maybe this is who I am now, someone better off by themselves. Not happier, but better off. Not an introvert, just an extrovert who had lost the knack.”