The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot: The new and unforgettable Richard & Judy Book Club pick

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New Nurse” has been visiting Lenni in the May Ward. She is Lenni’s favourite nurse, a flamboyant woman whom Lenni met when New Nurse escorted her to the chapel. She had An amusing chance encounter between Lenni and Margot, followed by an actual meeting in the new art therapy class sees an unlikely blossoming friendship form. Together they decide to paint one hundred paintings, each representing a story from their combined liv

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.

Unforgettable, life-enhancing and uplifting, this unique story of a friendship between an older woman and a teenager received incredible praise from readers, press and retailers alike. Lenni is 17 years old and is hospitalized for a fatal condition. Margot is 83 and is in the same hospital for serious cardiac issues. They briefly meet at a dumpster inside the hospital, then later in the Rose Room where patients convene for art projects. Seventeen plus 83 equals 100 years of life between Lenni and Margot. Together they set a goal of creating 100 paintings covering these 100 years. She stopped. She seemed so small that I wanted to scoop her up and lay her down in a pile of soft toys and cushions, and cover her in a warm blanket.” Lenni isn’t sure about her religious beliefs, but she still visits the chapel – why do you think this is? Lenni is seventeen, terminally ill, motherless, and although her father visits her, albeit infrequently, his visits just make it harder on her. He’s miserable when he visits, watching her and knowing there is nothing he can do to prevent her from dying, and she isn’t up to the burden of cheering him up, so she tells him not to visit again.

An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored. Margot loves gazing at the stars and on a cold clear night, Margot leads Lenni outside the hospital doors and into a quiet area. There they gaze at the millions of stars. When telling Lenni that the stars “that we see the clearest are already dead” Lenni states “Well that’s depressing”. “No, she said gently, it’s not depressing, it’s beautiful. They’ve been gone for who knows how long, but we can still see them. They live on”. I loved Lenni. She's so smart, so perceptive, so alive, and so grown up. One of her best friends is Father Arthur and he is just as important to her as Margot. She pushes him for answers and won't take trite platitudes from him...she forces him to admit he doesn't know, that he doesn't have answers to her very important questions. 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.Set in the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital, Marianne Cronin's debut novel is sprinkled with magic and star dust as it relates the intergenerational friendship and love that develops between the vibrant, full of life, Swedish born, 17 year old Lenni Pettersson and 83 year old Margot Macrae. Lenni is a resident of the May ward, for those with life limiting/terminal illnesses, she goes searching for answers for fundamental philosophical questions of life from Father Arthur, her candour a joy to behold and have a host of characters enter her life, providing her with a family she could hardly have forseen. Whilst her life is to be cruelly cut short at such a young age, she is to metaphorically live a longer one through the experience of the joys, love, losses, and grief of Margot's well lived life, who is in hospital for heart surgery. This heartbreakingly beautiful and moving debut novel details an unlikely but powerful intergenerational friendship that develops when it’s needed the most. Lenni, a 17 year old who is hospitalized with a terminal illness, meets Margot an 83 year old who is hospitalized with heart problems. While together in the art room Lenni realizes that between them she and Margot have lived 100 years. They decide to each paint a picture for each year of their lives. Through their paintings and the stories told about them we learn the details of both of these characters lives. Through the course of her hospitalization, Lenni finds Margot as well as several other friends who provide love and support and who help strengthen her resolve to live life fully. Margot moves to London despite not having any plan for when she gets there – if you could move to any city, where would you go? They’ve started to say “life-limiting” instead now. “Children and young people with life-limiting conditions . . .”