The inhabitants of a small town have long found that their lives intersect at one focal point: the local shopping mall. But business is down, stores are closing, and as the institution breathes its last gasp, the people inside it dream of something different, something more.
Sweetness pervades these early scenes in which Ms. Lin-Greenberg gently exposes a child’s optimism, a parent’s exhaustion and the tenderness that cushions each fresh disappointment. But there are also welcome hints of sharpness. The moribund mall is conjured up in wonderfully banal detail ... Compassion and wry understatement remain [Lin-Greenberg's] strengths, and in You Are Here she captures not only the frayed texture of suburban existence but also the turbulent emotions, immediate and long buried, of protagonists who are ultimately far more than stereotypes.
Masterful and understated ... Lin-Greenberg beautifully translates the lives of an ordinary group of people into an extraordinary, even triumphant novel.
After establishing a quirky tone, the novel’s third act reaches a grand scale as an active shooter prowls the mall, though the real drama rests in the characters’ reckoning with the limits of what is possible. This is a remarkable study of ordinary people’s extraordinary inner lives.
