This is a book where the two main characters are both terminally ill. They will both die. You’ll fall in love with them anyway. I’m typing this review with swollen eyes, as I finished this book last night before bed. Even though it was a tearjerker, I’d read it again. Cronin paints pictures with her words and through Lenni’s situation and encounters colours the story with wit and wisdom, with laugh-out-loud moments and weep-into-your-tissue moments too. Finally, and most importantly, I was bored. The storytelling needed to be sharper. Very little in this book was unique, and it was a chore to read.

Lenni, já te aconteceu perder algo importante como as chaves de casa, os óculos ou o telemóvel e… procurares, procurares, procurares… até que… já frustrada e esgotada… finalmente desistes?! Lenni will tell us about her first kiss, her alcoholic mother, the father who ultimately leaves her. Fiercely alive, disarmingly funny and brimming with tenderness, THE ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LENNI AND MARGOT unwraps the extraordinary gift of life, and revels in our infinite capacity for friendship and love when we need them most.I read a preview sample from BuzzBooks, so I knew to expect good writing and humour, but I didn’t expect such a detailed and thorough history of Margot’s long and interesting life. She tells Lenni stories with each of her paintings, and Lenni sometimes describes how the painting shows, for example, the stars. According to the publisher, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot is being adapted into a feature film by a major Hollywood studio, which I could see being quite good – the scenes in the book would lend themselves quite easily to a visual medium. A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism. We are introduced to Lenni, a seventeen year-old Swedish-born young woman now, for all intents and purposes, living on the May Ward of the Princess Royal Hospital in Glasgow, a ward for young people with “life-limiting” illnesses. When a new art room is set up, Lenni meets Margot, an eighty-three year old woman and together they decide to paint the story of their combined 100 years of life, one painting for each year. As they paint, they tell the stories behind some of the pictures.

It is when she meets Margot in the Rose Room, the designated name for the room for art therapy, where she begins to find someone else she can bond with, a bond formed over their combined ages. When Lenni signs her name and age, 17 years old, on a combined art project with Margot, she sees their combined ages, a magical number to her. The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot" by Marianne Cronin is a story about the power of friendship!

Lenni

If you were going to paint memories from all the years of your life – which moment or memory would you paint first? Artistic and talented eighty-three-year-old Margot Macrae is in the same hospital with severe heart problems and awaiting a second surgery. Margot is full of living, wisdom and generosity! Lenni and Arthur have very different opinions, but they manage to be friends anyway. What do you think makes them so compatible?

The book contain stories both by Lenni and Margot about their lives which they tell each other. Both have a positive outlook despite being terminal. Lenni shares her quirky views on people and life.

Retailers:

As their extraordinary friendship deepens, it becomes vividly clear that life is not done with Lenni and Margot yet. I struggled to think how to phrase exactly what had brought me here. A long dead man and his unequally loved sons. A fish. A priest. An itching to do anything other than mind white water rafting. . . None of those made enough sense to verbalize in front of a geriatric audience. The audiobook is beautifully narrated by Sheila Reid and Rebecca Benson and takes you on a memorable one-hundred-year journey during the 11 hours of listening time.