Mini Reviews of Recent Reads: You Are Here by David Nicholls and The Course of Love by Alain de Botton

I’m behind with my reviews again, and very much at risk of not completing 20 Books of Summer at my current rate. In an effort to catch up, here’s two for the price of one!

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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 new love story by beloved bestseller David Nicholls, You Are Here is a novel of first encounters, second chances and finding the way home.

David Nicholls is an author who, I expect, needs little introduction following the success of his previous novels such as One Day and Us.  For those who may not have read his previous works, he writes brilliant contemporary novels exploring love and relationships in all their messy iterations with great warmth, humour, and a thorough understanding of human nature.  His latest novel, You Are Here is no exception to this.

The novel follows Marnie and Michael who are both single and lonelier than they care to admit, although both claim to be perfectly happy with their circumstances, enjoying the freedom it brings them without looking too hard at the downsides.  They don’t know each other at the outset of the novel, but are invited onto a walk by a mutual friend who is determined to see both find love, although she doesn’t try to pair them off with each other, instead having alternative partners in mind for each. 

Marnie and Michael don’t seem all that compatible at the outset – Marnie works as a copy editor, and loves books and the comforts of home.  Michael is a geography teacher, which comes across even in some of his dealings outside of school, and loves taking long walks outdoors whatever the weather.  As the two find themselves abandoned by their companions after the first few tough days and some typical British weather, the two begin to bond and a friendship forms which may have the potential to develop into something more.      

Told from the alternating perspectives of these two characters, I found myself very quickly becoming attached to both, and Marnie in particular.  I loved her sense of humour and the way that she is very much (not so) silently correcting your grammar.  I also loved her determination to keep hiking, despite it not being her usual choice of activity and her new hiking boots rubbing her feet raw over the first few days.  She’s chatty and persistent even as the hike challenges her.  Michael is quite a different character.  Happiest on his own, or so he claims, he initially finds walking with others tiresome.  They don’t keep to his pace, and are for the most part badly prepared.  While the weather doesn’t bother him, it most definitely bothers the others, leading to a lot of grumbling.  When it’s just the two of them, however, he starts to find Marnie more engaging. 

You Are Here is written with Nicholls’ trademark warmth and humour, and is a fantastic novel that I loved from start to finish.  I really wanted to see Marnie and Michael become an item as I loved their interactions with each other as their friendship gradually develops.  Of course, you’ll have to read it to find out if it works out! 😉

Highly recommended, whether you’re new to Nicholls’ work or have read any of his previous novels.

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Modern love is never easy. Society is obsessed with stories of romance, but what comes after happily ever after?
This is a love story with a difference. From dating to marriage, from having kids to having affairs, it follows the progress of a single ordinary relationship: tender, messy, hilarious, painful, and entirely un-Romantic. It is a love story for the modern world, chronicling the daily intimacies, the blazing rows, the endless tiny gestures that make up a life shared between two people. Moving and deeply insightful, The Course of Love offers us a window into essential truths about the nature of love.

My book group hasn’t met for a while for a variety of reasons, but this month’s choice was The Course of Love by Alain de Botton.  It’s not something that I would have normally picked up, and I’ll be honest in that I went into it with quite low expectations.  I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, and I’m glad that I did read it when it was tempting to skip this one.

On the surface, The Course of Love is a novel about a contemporary relationship.  Rabih and Kirsten meet through work, go on a date, become a more formal item.  Rabih proposes – perhaps a little impetuously – and they get married and have children.  It’s all so relatable – they are an utterly ordinary couple who have good and bad days.  They get along well, they are a team, they know each other better than anyone else and yet they argue over stupid things, they sulk, and they take their bad days out on each other.  It’s all very normal stuff.

What makes The Course of Love a little different is that Alain de Botton offers a running commentary on Rabih and Kirsten’s relationship, italicised to separate these thoughts and insights from the main narrative.  These snippets offer a philosophical perspective on why people behave as they do – the good, the bad, and the downright ugly – and on love and modern-day relationships in general.  We see how their backgrounds, upbringing, and past experiences make them behave as they do, even though they know it doesn’t help the other.  So, when Kirsten becomes distant, which Rabih hates, or when Rabih gets a bit shouty which Kirsten understandably doesn’t appreciate, the reader understands more.  And perhaps frustratingly, the reader also understands that if they ever sat down and spoke about why they react a certain a way that they’d understand each better and be more tolerant of each other’s foibles.  Of course, they don’t, because arguments pass, and it’s forgotten until the next disagreement occurs. 

Despite my initial reservations, I found The Course of Love to be an interesting read and I was surprised at how much I found I could relate to within its pages.  Not everything, as we all have our idiosyncrasies, and some of what’s presented here is commonsense while other elements are more profound, but it’s a fascinating insight into modern day relationships in all their glorious messiness.

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Books 7 and 8 of 20 Books of Summer.