Marianne CroninThe One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot: A Novel

This beautiful book tells a story of friendship, of love, of people you make family. It takes place in a hospital with the main characters that strike up an unlikely friendship and share the process of dying by sharing the stories of their lives through art. The author brings each person alive and multidimensional. She conveys an understanding of how complicated people and relationships can be. It was very sweet, sentimental and sad.

This story was about a sad time in life but instead of being heavy and tragic , it is light and lovely. It is about two souls who became the best of friends and walked a memory road of their lives together. This is a beautiful story!

This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. The story of Lenni & Margot is filled with touching experiences that made me laugh and cry. Lenni as the primary character sees and lives life through a unique perspective. Margot is the unlikely but perfect companion to Lenni. I wish I could meet both Lenni & Margot in real life. I don’t want to give away any of the plot and ruin it for future readers. All I can say is read it!

The reflection questions ask if it is possible to have more than one love of your life? I believe yes, people are sent to be a part of your life at different times and different reasons. This is a sweet story of love and loss in many forms. Love how art was used in depicting their story.

Seventeen year old Lenni and 83 year old Margot, both terminally ill, develop the sweetest friendship filled with tenderness, life stories, laughter and love.Lennie also develops a close friendship with Father Arthur and some of their conversations regarding religion and the ‘dresses’ Father Arthur wears and eating lunch on the alter had me chuckling out loud!Even though the theme of the book revolves around illness and mortality, it is filled with moments of joy, star gazing, and the many types of love interspersed with light hearted conversations and laughter.This book and it’s wonderful characters and all the emotions will stay with me a long time. I highly recommended it!

This was so promising and there were some things that I just adored from it. And so ucb else that just felt flat. The characters were both very real, and also, not real enough to me. Normally a book like this would have me sobbing. But this one I just read through page by page with a sort of musing expression on my face. That’s all I could do.I wish I knew what was missing, because the premise is great, but something about this just fell short of the mark.

I love senior citizens and the premise of a teenager and a senior becoming besties was a big draw for me. But the fact that they are both confined to a hospital and terminal makes the story very heavy, even with the noteable giggles throughout. However, it speaks to the quality of writing that I made it till the end because at times it felt like a challenge to stay with it. I usually only read at night before going to sleep and a lot of this story had some deep emotional crap happening that didn't make for the best bedtime story. The only way I'd recommend this book is if you enjoy tearjerkers. I don't.

I loved this book! Characters were likable and interesting. It made me cry at the end. Highly recommend reading it!

Loved this book. Made me laugh and cry and captured my interest in between. The delightful relationship of an old lady and a young girl, both with the same feisty independent spirit, makes for a delightful read.

A very nice, feel-good read...

"We can’t know why you are dying in the same way we can’t know why we are living. Living and dying are complete mysteries, and you can’t know either until you have done both."WOW!!!!Having read this book I now need to reassess my previous 5 ⭐️ reads. This book is up there, in the top 3 of the best books I have ever read!!!!! I have so much to say about it, but I’m struggling to do it the justice it deserves. Here goes….This book tells the story of Lenni a 17 year old who has a terminal illness. Although fighting this illness Lenni is alive and wants to live. She refuses with all her strength to let this illness take her life. She sees herself as the person she should be, not who she now is. Lenni is wise beyond her years. She is a beautiful character who is well liked by everyone that she meets, in walks Margot.Margot is an 83 year old within the same hospital as Lenni and she is suffering with heart problems for which she requires more surgery.They become unlikely friends at an art class set up for the patients within the hospital.This book is absolute perfection. It tells the story so beautifully of two unlikely friends and how they bond over a joint project dreamt up by Lenni. We hear about the lives of both, the happiness and sadness leading up to them being in hospital. There is a lot of the story that is of Margot’s life, not surprising really as she has a lot more to tell as she is much older.I laughed out loud several times during the book. However as the book went on the sadness started to hang over me. This book is a complete celebration of life and love and to be honest it makes you think about the impressions you leave on your own friends and family. This book is thought provoking on another level. The writing is beautiful, the characters are all so well developed. I cannot believe that this is Cronin’s debut novel!!If you were wanting to choose a book that will leave a lasting impression on you, then don’t delay in reading this, you won’t be disappointed, sad definitely but not disappointed.

I would give this six stars simply because of the ending and the amount of emotion it draws from the reader but it also has so much to offer.It is well written and it has a fascinating plot, one which is intriguing and fresh, and original despite the subject. Connecting with the characters is easy. This last one is a surprise. Sickness and death are painful enough without the reader having a good idea where this will end and wondering whether another book might be a better prospect. It’s not. This is a journey worth taking. It gives hope to living our best life no matter the circumstances, no matter how brief and it pushes so many fears to the side.A beautiful read.

つかみのコンセプトでキャラクターがしっかり心に残った。ハッピーな話ではないが、ユーモアある対話にて軽やかに描かれていて秀逸。アーサー司祭の立ち位置から、キリスト教が今のイギリスの若い世代にどのような位置にあるのかが覗えて興味深かった