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

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Since I lost a dear, long-time friend unexpectedly recently, I might have expected to find The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot too difficult to read. After all, both Lenni and Margot, our main characters, are in the hospital. Lenni tells us she has a life-limiting illness and Margot is being treated for a heart ailment at age 83. I could expect the outcome to be one or both deaths. Because the story is about love, friendship, a bond between two unlikely people and celebrating little joys, I found it an absorbing read and one that appealed to my heart. Lenni is 17 and is in the May Ward of the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital because she has a terminal disease. Ooops, sorry. Lenni tells us staff are supposed to say “life-limiting” now instead of terminal – and anyway, terminal makes her think of an airport terminal. Note her reference to the airport children, above. She is bright and funny and openly questioning of everything. Two lives, explored through the prism of terminal illness, become interwoven, one long and full, the other about to be cut short. An unlikely friendship develops between hospital patients Lenni, 17 years old, lonely and irreverent, seeking answers, and 83 year old Margot, who has known love, in various forms, but who is left alone at the end of her unconventional life. Lenni and Margot devise an artistic project in the newly created art therapy room, to make a picture for every year of their combined ages. And so their stories are told, a century of living, celebrated. 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. This multi-generational novel about friendship is something special: moving, joyful, and life-affirming." - Good Housekeeping

We become part of that listening. We hear Lenni’s innermost thoughts and the stories of those she connects with: the hospital chaplain, her anguished father, a fellow patient whose dying wish she is able to fulfil, a young graduate who, unable to find more suitable employment, is taken on as a temp and who through her own initiative secures funding for the art therapy room. And thus the 100 years art project is able to be born. There is more to this story, but essentially, this is a lovely debut that is about living life fully, despite knowing that this life is finite. Filled with the joys of life, of love, it is an ode to living life fully, as joyfully as possible, celebrating life on your own terms.

Nothing about The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot worked for me. The premise sounds incredible: Lenni and Margot have a combined age of 100 years. They will each paint one picture for every year that they have been alive. Hugely affecting and witty, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margotis a rarely affecting novel that expresses universal truths in the most unforgettable way.”

A charming, fiercely alive and disarmingly funny debut novel in the vein of John Green, Rachel Joyce, and Jojo Moyes—a brave testament to the power of living each day to the fullest, a tribute to the stories that we live, and a reminder of our unlimited capacity for friendship and love. Poor, lovely Father Arthur. He is a delight. Then there is The Temp. The story is told from Lenni’s point of view, except she tells us about The Temp from the third person point of view, and for some reason, it works. A charming, fiercely alive and disarmingly funny debut novel in the vein of John Green, Rachel Joyce, and Jojo Moyes - a brave testament to the power of living each day to the fullest, a tribute to the stories that we live, and a reminder of our unlimited capacity for friendship and love. When she meets 83-year-old Margot, a fellow patient offering new friendship and enviable artistic skills, Lenni's life begins to soar in ways she'd never imagined. As their bond deepens, a world of stories opens up: of wartime love and loss, of misunderstanding and reconciliation, of courage, kindness and joy. Stories that have led them to the end of their days....”

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. 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 is 17 years old, has a gift for painting, is dying from a terminal disease and… wants to know why? 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.

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