Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsLovely
Reviewed in Australia on 30 August 2021
Seventeen yo Lenni meets 83 yo Margot in a Glasgow hospital. They both have something terminal going on, though Lenni’s illness is never specified. With Margot it’s her heart. Despite being a quirky, interesting person, Lenni is lonely. She’s told her father not to visit (he’s lost in grief) and her mother has gone back to Sweden. So the friendship she develops with Margot and the kindly Father Arthur from the hospital chapel, and the interactions with cheerful Paul the porter and New Nurse with the cherry red hair mean a lot. Lenni and Margot embark on a project to make 100 paintings to celebrate moments in their combined 100 years of life. They tell each other stories from their lives - more so Margot, who has more to tell. Like any life, it’s had its vicissitudes. The paths of ordinary life are rarely straight. This is such a charming and heartfelt story that it’s not surprising that it’s been bought by a Hollywood studio. Let’s hope they don’t make it an American film (they probably will). It’s told with a light, unsentimental touch and Marianne Cronin is to be congratulated for conveying to us the depths of these two protagonists with an effortless-seeming wisdom that never belabours its points, leaving much unsaid.
