Three hundred kilometres: it is the distance to cover by walking, to find your way in the world. Word of David Nicholls.
It starts from St Bess on the west coast of England, crosses the Lake District, enters the Moors, and descends to the Yorkshire coast.
Separated geography teacher, Michael chose isolation as a cure: He can no longer stay in the empty house after his wife leaves. And so he walks, as often as he can, with a hood on his head to create his own little private world, strictly alone, between mountains and moors, as a natural sedative to his restlessness.
It’s not easy to redefine your life and your idea of the future at the age of forty, everyone does it in their own way. And Michael has a backpack full of regrets, for the failed marriage, of fears for a beating he suffered, but also of sweetness, with a fatherhood that never arrived and which found a surrogate in teaching: a non-father who loves being among the kids but can no longer be among adults.
“The point was the solitude, and none of the places he went were ever deserted enough for his tastes.”
There are fragilities of the soul that Nicholls knows how to bring out with tact and empathy: Marnie is pretty, brilliant, lives in London, and never thought she would reach 38 alone. The of her not of her is isolation, it is precisely loneliness that has settled little by little, with friends who are sucked into work, transfers, families, with work as a freelance editor, with the illusion of being self-sufficient itself. Marnie has lost her edge. There is a seductive routine in being alone, eating what you want, watching your own programs, finding excuses not to have to wear makeup and a smile and going out. It’s incredibly easy to get lost in the spiral of independence, disguising loneliness as freedom, only to then realize that you haven’t taken photos in months, that you’re starting to talk to yourself, but above all that you’re terrified of others. The awareness of the void forces Marnie to admit the truth about herself, having to change something.
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“Sometimes, he thought, it is easier to stay alone than to show oneself alone to the rest of the world, but he knew that this too was a trap, that by doing nothing the situation would become as permanent as a stain penetrating the wood.”
Two lonely souls therefore, Michael and Marnie, one traveling around Cumbria, the other locked in the house. But if it is true that light passes through even the smallest cracks, it takes our mutual friend Cleo to force her hand. All together on that walk that Michael has been planning for some time, a handful of days coast to coast. Michael doesn’t want companions, accustomed to his rhythms, pace and silence, but accepts more out of exhaustion than conviction, Marnie doesn’t even know where to start, with the trekking equipment and the idea of having to socialize, but accepts because he understands that he must try to have at least some photos in his phone and in his head. Hiking days with unknown people: a potentially horrendous experience for both of you.
“Talk to others, talk to others, talk to others. It’s absurd that it was so difficult.” How to break your loneliness, how to communicate with others: this is the whole problem of life, Cesare Pavese knew it well. Marnie, with twelve pairs of trousers inside a badly fastened backpack, and Michael, with a beard and a sweater to protect himself from glances and from the world, in the midst of a mismatched company, find themselves walking together, in a tangible discomfort that has the contours of the first times.
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“He had read somewhere that people found it easier to speak frankly while hiking, something to do with looking forward and the pace. He should have been careful about the image he gave. Not too open, not too reserved, not the schoolmaster, not the poet, not the one from the North, not the grizzled old mountain man; not the hypercritical one, because all the boots had been new boots”.
You are here (Neri Pozza, translated by Scilla Forti) tells of changes, small openings, steps to learn to take together with others, possibilities that life can offer, just look outside.
“The landscape is life” and it is salvation, because it follows the rhythm of the human soul.
Nature is itself part of the storyin unison with the characters: the places are spectators and also creators, they are mud and rain to lower the defenses of the protagonists, to break down the rigid conformism of knowledge, they allow themselves to be cursed with complacency knowing that this will be a vocabulary to bring them closer, they illuminate of sun and glimpses of beauty lifting the fog and fears, they offer with diabolical malice lakes of icy water where one has to huddle in the cold, and gray and melancholic moors where one can feel nostalgia. All of it with a beauty that explodes with suggestion and conquers even Marnie’s urban indifference.
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“Cyclic anxieties, ancient regrets, there was no mountain in all England that could obscure them.”
David Nicholls has written a guide to human geography, where each chapter opens with a map, with a series of practical information on inns, b&bs, paths, rocks, and wi-fi passwords. Michael is also a professor on the go, pedantic in peppering the dialogues with geological and landscape details and curiosities. But they are all ploys: however much Nicholls tries to deceive the reader, it is clear that You are here it is not a book about traveling through England, but it is a human map with dialogue at its centre.
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The author, always a keen observer of life and love, focuses on the conversation: those exchanges that are his winning weapon, which, as with the bestseller One day, they make him shine in the characterization of the characters. The dialogues are sparkling, full of wit, intelligence, sarcasm: Marnie and Michael have common threads, in irony and in the ability to describe episodes and people, to find the ridiculous in themselves and in others and their exchanges are irresistible. The result is an unexpected comedy that deflates every moment of emotion. It is with this ironic register, in fact, that Nicholls manages to talk about our fragility, because in that struggle of living among others we have all found ourselves at least once, and we recognize the modesty, the sense of inadequacy, the strangeness of feeling the own voice, which sounds a little forced to us, yet shrill in an awkward, and often tragically comic, attempt to be casual.
Then you go, regain your confidence, lower your shoulders, start talking, take your breath away and start againlowering barriers and defenses, unwary, perhaps poorly equipped, but learning a rhythm again and the exciting freshness of a second chance.
