The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

Marianne Cronin

An extraordinary friendship. A lifetime of stories.
Their last one begins here.

Life is short. No-one knows that better than seventeen-year-old Lenni living on the terminal ward. But as she is about to learn, it’s not only what you make of life that matters, but who you share it with.

Dodging doctor’s orders, she joins an art class where she bumps into fellow patient Margot, a rebel-hearted eight-three-year-old from the next ward. Their bond is instant as they realize that together they have lived an astonishing one hundred years.

To celebrate their shared century, they decide to paint their life stories: of growing old and staying young, of giving joy, of receiving kindness, of losing love, of finding the person who is everything.

As their extraordinary friendship deepens, it becomes vividly clear that life is not done with Lenni and Margot yet.

Fiercely alive, disarmingly funny and brimming with tenderness, THE ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LENNI AND MARGOT unwraps the extraordinary gift of life even when it is about to be taken away, and revels in our infinite capacity for friendship and love when we need them most.

-Excerpt taken from Goodreads.

Check Goodreads to see the book’s ratings.

My Opinion

“The cruelty of strangers never usually upsets me, but the kindness of strangers is oddly devastating.”

(4 / 5) What a beautifully written story! Lenni (17) stole my heart and I couldn’t help but love her. She’d been abandoned by her family (at her request) to live out the rest of her terminal illness at the hospital. She finds friends in the oddest of places and I loved that for her. Among those friends is Margot, an 83 yo with severe heart problems.

We visit each Lenni and Margot’s lives intermittently throughout. We get more of Margot’s story but we hear from Lenni in the present. They’ve learned that together they make up 100 years and they celebrate each year with a story and a painted picture. I loved their friendship and each friendship Lenni had. They were few but precious. It’s beautifully written and will tug at your heart. 

Content Summary: F- 3, minimal language, young and old people with terminal illnesses, parental abandonment, F/F relationship (kissing), war PTSD, infidelity, a baby’s sickness and death, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, deaths, alcoholism, talk of God and what possibly lies beyond death.

Thank you to Harper Perennial for the gifted copy in exchange for an honest review. This book releases June 1, 2021.

**As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases.