Tuesday Book Review

Five-star review for The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin

Lenni, who’s seventeen, and Margo, who’s eighty-three, meet in an arts and crafts class for seventy- and eighty-year-olds at a chronic disease hospital in Glasgow. Both are dying but they develop a friendship and share stories of their lives with their pictures. Lenni decides that, since their combined age is 100, they should create 100 paintings depicting their lives. Many others in the hospital support them, including the art teacher, others in the class, a friendly nurse, a helpful porter and probably most of all, Father Arthur, the hospital chaplain who is soon to retire. This lovely story of an age-bridging friendship that changes their attitudes toward dying. At Margo’s age, I also wonder why I remember certain events and people in my life more than others.

Tuesday Book Review on Wednesday

 

Five-star review for Where the Sea Lavender Grows by Kitty Johnson

 

A semisweet book about two sisters, Lilias and Ruth living in the countryside in England who take in a boy and his mother who were evacuated from London during WWII and the connection to a modern day young woman, Elise,  who is grieving the loss of her son and is restoring the house in North Suffolk where the sisters had lived. Each of the characters is lovingly written. The descriptions of the area pull the reader in. Add a bit of history, a touch of mystery, and even of architecture and you have a very good read. The back and forth in time wasn’t ever jarring. Definitely worth reading.