A review by booking_along
The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin

dark reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

When people say “terminal”, i think of the airport.

this book had such a fantastic start’!
lenni’s blunt voice and opinions, her honesty and “just say it as it ist attitude were really nice and different. 

but after about 50 pages, it got repetitive for me and the very short and jumpy chapters, that make the novel feel more like a short story collection, made me feel disconnected and in many chapters uninterested. 

which is sad, but it happens. 
i think it was a good story but this is one of the few ones that i wish would have been a novella. 
that would have been enough. 
it would have give. the view into a young’s person perspective of having a deadly illness and how people treat them, and how they exit rice life knowing that they will not be a or to live it as so many others do. 

but there is just so much a story of that kind can tell before it feels too stretched out.

i suppose she felt she ought to warn him, because he looked as excited as a child on christmas morning receiving a train set wrapped in a big bow, when in reality, the gift she was presenting him with was broken. he could get attached if he wanted, but the wheels were already coming off and the whole thing wasn’t likely to see another he r christmas. 

my opinion could also be that way because while i found lenni interesting, i didn’t have any investment in margot at all . maybe because the as only brought into the book at a point where i already felt it became too long. or maybe her parts really didn’t bringt too much to the story itself. i don’t know. 

“why am i dying?”
“because you are. think of it this way. why are you alive?
why do you exist at all? why are you alive? what is your life for?”
“i don’t know.”
“i think the same is true if dying. we can’t know why you are dying in the same way that we can’t know why you are living. Living and dying are both complete mysteries, and you can’t know either until you have done both.”


it had fantastic point about live and sickness, dying and surviving. 
it was honest and real and in many ways unapologetic, which i enjoyed because it’s rare to see that especially regarding this kind of topic. 


for me this book was more of a reflection and thought provoking story about reminding people that dead is just as live is - a mystery and something that we can’t chance but mostly have to take as it comes. 

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