The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin is a deeply emotional examination of what it means to live one’s life and get the most out of it. Lenni Petterssen is a young girl with a terminal illness, and Margot is an older woman recovering in the same hospital who meets Lenni in a hospital art class. Together they create stories through art to depict the 100 years of their combined lives.
Lenni is precocious. In speaking with the hospital chaplain, Father Arthur, she raises the question of his ability to “market” his church to the people and get more of them in the doors. He simply tells her the chapel is always busy. Lenni also questions her own fate and death in these chats with the chaplain, but it is her friendship with Margot that shimmers.
Margot tells her life story to Lenni over the course of their time together, which is far shorter than it seems in the book. Cronin is adept at lengthening time, and making Lenni’s life longer than it is. She provides us with an expansive view of living. Margot breahtes life into Lenni, and Lenni provides Margot with the courage to move out of her comfortable box to find the love she’s searched for her whole life and to reconcile her past abandonments to find not only forgiveness but solace.
The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin is a beautiful journey of love and connection. Highly recommended.
RATING: Cinquain
About the Author:
Marianne Cronin was born in 1990 in Warwickshire, England. She studied English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham. She now spends most of her time writing with her rescue cat, Puffin, sleeping under her desk.
Her debut novel, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, took seven years to write. It is to be published in over twenty languages and is being adapted into a feature film by a major Hollywood studio.
For those interested, this is the first book I read for the 12 friends, 12 books reading challenge.