Captivating ... Nicholls has fashioned an ideal structure for an affectingly hard-won romance ... Nicholls’s dialogue is flawless (he’s also an experienced screenwriter) and even his descriptions of bogs and muck can enchant. The novel is sharp-tongued and irresistible, the most intelligent treat.
A great comic novel that also asks the reader to think about the place of humour in fiction: there’s a dangerous proximity throughout the novel between laughter and tears ... Nicholls is superb on the landscape of this beautiful part of the world ... The reader becomes so invested in the outcome of this unspectacular, everyday, cagoule-clad romance that it makes the whole world shimmer with a kind of secret possibility, as if such narratives are everywhere, just out of sight.
If the plot is pedestrian, Mr. Nicholls keeps it going at a near-sprint, creating delightful agony for the reader ... Snappy banter and Mr. Nicholls’s endless supply of witty and literate observations make every page a pleasure ... Lightweight? Sure, but exactly the proper weight for a book that glides so elegantly to its destination.
Another ferociously likable romance ... In less expert hands this could feel almost absurdly formulaic. That it doesn’t is down to Nicholls’s extraordinary ability to capture the absurdity of modern life in pithy textural details ... A comforting antidote to the grimness of our grim world.
A warm, witty and beautifully observed tale ... You Are Here lacks the agonies and ecstasies of Nicholls' previous books ... However, Nicholls still manages to inject drama and pathos into the proceedings, and ensures that we are so invested in his characters that we follow them every step of the way.
Both appealingly straightforward and fairly preposterous ... Much of this novel’s comic energy emanates from the dialogue ... Yet such performative verbal hilarity also feels like a misstep: can two strangers really fall so easily into such ceaseless yet effortless badinage? When it comes to two people falling in love, Nicholls is usually careful to offset his natural sentimentality with a dash of plangency, but here we get a 10-page long discussion of favourite songs that’s much too cute for words ... Before long, it all becomes dull.
Slowly, Nicholls builds true chemistry between Marnie and Michael, two roughed-up souls, and doesn’t let readers know what will become of them before they do. Reaching back into the lives they’ve already lived and the concomitant sorrows therein, their enjoyable story unfolds in addicting inner monologues and fizzing dialogue.
Like their arduous walk, this love story isn’t glamorous or fast-paced but it’s worth the mileage. Given the witty dialogue and sublime natural settings (think Wordsworth and Brontë), it’s not hard to imagine this as another of Nicholls’ big-screen adaptations.
