HT reviewer Saudamini Jain picks her favourite read of 2024

A post pandemic literary romcom featuring characters from the generation that never quite cracked romantic love

David Nicholls’ We are Here is a millennial middle-age post-pandemic literary romcom. It’s about two single people, a couple of years on either side of 40, hiking coast to coast across the English countryside from the Irish Sea to the North Sea, getting to know each other.

A millennial love story: The novel moves slowly, savouringly, a classic will-they-won’t-they. So much gets in the way of them getting together, but the action, even the lack there of, never dips. (Harper)

Marnie is a freelance copy editor. (Over the course of this novel, she’s editing an erotic thriller — “the wild punctuation, commas scattered like rose petals, the yelp of exclamation marks,” that kind of thing.) She had married and divorced young, only to find that the promises of the age of friendship — that golden institution more fulfilling than romantic love — have ended, so she has spent a major part of her thirties alone, and, she hates to admit it, lonely. Michael is a geography schoolteacher. After his wife left him, he turned to going on walks, which, he found “transformed loneliness to solitude, a far more dignified state because it was his choice.”

The novel opens, like Bridget Jones’s Diary, with a new year resolution — Marnie’s: “No more relentless self-care” Instead, she decides she would care for others, revive old friendships and form new ones. And so, urged by a pushy mutual friend, she decides to join a small group of people on a hike organized (begrudgingly) by Michael. Even before they begin, people start to drop out, and the group dwindles quickly until it’s just the two of them.

Reviewer Saudamini Jain (Courtesy the subject)

These two people, out of social practice, weathered into caution by past loves and life, somehow get along. And, as it turns out, people do find it “easier to talk frankly when walking, something about the forward gaze and the rhythm.” After the slew of pandemic novels in the last couple of years, it was a joy to read about people recovering from two years of isolation. They walk through villages and moors, staying at shady pubs, crossing lakes, getting drenched in the rain... much of it romantic but they’re covered in sweat and the hike is rough (especially on Marnie), so it’s also a very real-life adult scenario. They get to know each other, talking about this, that, their exes, not having children and other regrets. Tenderness and tension slowly build. They listen to each other’s music (in a most romantic scene involving Bluetooth earbuds) and exchange more life stories. It’s also funny. He’s wry, she’s sarcastic, their banter is really quite delightful.

The novel moves slowly, savouringly, a classic will-they-won’t-they. So much gets in the way of them getting together, but the action, even the lack there of, never dips. As the oldest of the millennials, the generation that never quite cracked romantic love, enter middle age, You Are Here maps it charmingly.

Also, this is the year of David Nicholls. Millions of us spent February watching the second adaptation of his novel One Day on Netflix.

Saudamini Jain is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.