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

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It was about making peace with your own mortality, finding a place where you belong, and that family is not always blood-related. one more thing: and not the books fault — but I’ve read a few books recently that I soooo passionately loved, [“The Paper Palace”, and a few others], that I find myself still wishing for that ‘gut-exciting’ rush-read. I loved Lenni’s character, her straightforwardness, her resilience, and the impact she made on the people around her at such a young age. I didn't know what story I was reading or what this book was about but I can tell you that it has been one of the best books I have read in my life.

And in the quiet, as she carefully outlined her yellow star in gold, I got this feeling I've never felt with anyone. They are there for each other whenever the need arises, as they paint in the Rose room, for their art therapy classes run by art teacher, Pippa, with Lenni becoming an honorary member of the octogenarians art group. Margot tells her life story – full of loss, reinvention, and all the different types of love she has experienced. She studied English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham.Her interactions with the hospital chaplain, the gentle Father Arthur, are both amusing and thought-provoking for both of them. Lenni begins the story informing us that she’s in the “terminal” ward, aka the May ward, of the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital.

Or at least, we have laid down to die, and let go of everything in this world, hoping for dreams and morning. MY THOUGHTS: "Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

I had a suspicion this would be a profoundly poignant and thought provoking book but it went much deeper than that and took a hold of my heart and squeezed it dry from the very first page.

Ebook (Kobo): 336 pages, 91k words (It must include the author’s notes, acknowledgment and book club questions).Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Margot is a talented artist and for her 83 years of life Lenni records the stories that Margot tells with each picture she creates. She tells Lenni stories with each of her paintings, and Lenni sometimes describes how the painting shows, for example, the stars.

The humor and tears, joy and heartbreak, the isolation and loneliness of illness, grief through the loss of a loved one, and the power and love of friendship will hit you like a punch to the gut!Lenni’s mother abandoned her years ago and her father’s palpable grief at Lenni’s prognosis prompted her to limit his painful visits. I love snark and wit, but I’m not a fan of teenagers whose every utterance out of their mouth is snarky and witty. He didn’t know what to do with that, so he picked up the Bible from the pew beside him, thumbed through it without looking at the pages, and put it down again. Margot will tell us about her first love, her marriage to a wonderful man, Humphrey, and the chickens they treated as their own children!