David Nicholls says his new novel ‘begins where One Day ends’

I wasn’t aware of David Nicholls’ reputation as one of the nicest men in publishing, but before we had even spoken, I was thinking it. Neither of us could work our Zoom link, and after panicked texts and 15 minutes of faffing, he insisted we do a video call so we could see each other – “it’s nicer” – even offering to continue the interview while walking to his next appointment.

It didn’t come to that, but it would have been fitting given walking is a central theme in Nicholls’ latest novel. You Are Here is told from alternating perspectives of two middle-aged characters, both divorced and both, although loath to admit it, lonely: 38-year-old Marnie, a sardonic London copy editor and the more reserved (and more wounded by his loneliness) Michael, a 42-year-old geography teacher from York.

The two are introduced by a mutual friend, Cleo, who has rounded up a party for a walking trip across northern England. Michael, the diehard walker among them, and sceptical at the amateurs Cleo has assembled, has decided to secretly keep walking beyond the planned three-day itinerary, and the reluctant Marnie, who has packed dresses and even heels alongside her GORE-TEX accessories, initially plans to drop out after one day.

But gradually, as they tramp across hills and dales, past lakes and across moors, occasionally in driving rain, they realise they’re both enjoying themselves, and soon develop feelings for each other.

Like all his novels, it’s full of rapid-fire banter, recognisable characters and pop-cultural references – and it’s very funny; Nicholls thinks it’s possibly his funniest book yet.

“I was thinking of screwball comedies and road movies, the way that there’s a lot of banter back and forth – that kind of Planes, Trains and Automobiles friction,” he says. “The idea of having that kind of screwball pace to it was really appealing.”

Nicholls, then, is presumably a funny man?

“Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? But the joy of writing comic dialogue is that you have three or four years to make it funny, to make a character funny in the moment,” he says. “They’re being spontaneous, but I’ve thought about it for two years, so it’s a great opportunity to be … witty in slow motion.”

As with all of Nicholls’ books, though, there’s more going on than in your standard romcom; in You Are Here – his sixth novel – there’s an undercurrent exploring the idea of solitude. Whereas in many romcoms the idea of being alone is a sign of failure, this book features something of a rumination on the joys of solitude.

Something that, for Nicholls, walking brings.

“I didn’t want it to be single life – hell; coupledom – wonderful. I wanted to be a little bit more even-handed,” he says. “I think time by yourself can be incredibly valuable if it’s voluntary and deliberate. I walk a long way every day. I walk a lot in London, and if I can get out of the city, I love it.”

As well as eschewing the London Underground, he regularly sets out for multi-day ventures on some of England’s longer walking paths, including the Coast to Coast Walk – a 192-mile (309-kilometre) path from Cumbria and through the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors – that Marnie and Michael follow in the book.

“I do at least two a year because I have family responsibilities, so they’re quite short, just three or four days,” Nicholls says.

Short? “I walk all day, so I can cover 80 or 100 miles. I love the ground changing beneath our feet; you can feel the landscape, and the geology change in very gradual ways.”

My feet hurt just hearing that distance, especially in Imperial measurements. “That’s why I go alone because I’m very boring! When my kids were younger they used to come with me, but there’s nothing in the world that would possess them to do that now,” he says.

This kind of walking is much more a middle-aged idea of fun – and You Are Here’s characters are older than most of Nicholls’ other protagonists. “I’ve only ever written (characters) older than myself once, in Us, when the protagonist was 13 years older than me, and that felt like thinking myself into another body – now I am in that body!”

And while he says he doesn’t feel hugely different, he likes looking at love in different stages of life: “How it changes, what it means, and I guess I wanted to keep going … I was writing this when I was working on One Day and I wanted to imagine a kind of continuation of that age, so it kind of begins where One Day ends.”

Which leads us, of course, into talking about One Day. How could we not? On the back of the recent – and phenomenally successful – Netflix adaptation, his 15-year-old bestseller not only re-entered the public conversation, it also re-entered the bestseller lists, landing at No.1 on The Sunday Times Bestseller List and topping Amazon UK’s Best Sellers of 2024 list.

Even when it was first published, Nicholls was “overwhelmed” by One Day’s largely word-of-mouth success.

“In some ways it’s much bigger than it was back then because it’s international, and TV has a reach that even successful fiction doesn’t have,” Nicholls, who has also worked as a successful screenwriter, says. “In other ways, I feel a bit calmer about it; I’m still able to think about this book and other work. It’s become a really kind of wonderful part of my life, but it’s also something I’ve got a certain amount of distance from.”

He was, though, a producer on the Netflix series, involved, he says, in every aspect. “But I also ceded a lot of control as well to Nicole (Taylor), the brilliant lead writer, and to the other producers. I didn’t have any kind of veto, or dominant role. I was very much part of the team, which was really lovely.”

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Like the rhythms of the walk in You Are Here matching the story itself, the streaming format set up a pace that very much lent itself to One Day’s story.

“It did! We were really pleased that when it was released, people were starting to watch and be gripped and moved by it, because you have these meetings with Netflix where they tell you that you have to accept that the number of people watching the final episode is going to be much, much less, than the people who start watching,” he says.

Writing something that wasn’t, say, a crime thriller or a detective series without a “big reveal”, then, was concerning. “This was just … episodes from life, so we did worry about that. But people really did watch it all the way through, which is testament, I think, to Nicole’s brilliant writing, the great actors and the producers.”

And while Nicholls is too lovely and modest to say, obviously his great story.

The fact that all these newcomers to the book know how the story ends and yet still want to read it – doesn’t that say it all?

“It is amazing,” he concedes, “and it doesn’t always happen.” Publishers, he says, find it something of a gamble to re-release a tie-in edition of a book that’s been adapted for a TV series or a film.

“Sometimes a show can actually kill off a book,” he says. “So I am delighted that people have come back for it.”

You Are Here by David Nicholls (Hachette) is out now.

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