The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin was highly recommended in Renee's Reading Club (that group on Facebook where I get a lot of recommendations). When I was ready for a new audio book and this was available, I scooped it up. It was very confusing at first to listen to because I couldn't tell who was speaking, I didn't realize that the chapter names were sentences which made things seem to not make sense. I was almost ready to return the book to the library. Unread. Instead, I put it aside, and requested the e-book version. I really wanted to give this novel a chance. Once I got the e-book, the format, the narration, the chapter titles all made sense. I was then able to seamlessly move from the e-book and the audio book. That's something I am rarely able to do with a book.

The upshot is that I loved this story. Seventeen year old Lenni and 83-year old Margot meet in an art class while patients in a Glasgow hospital. They realize that between the two of them they've lived 100 years. And between the two of them, they have 100 years of life stories. They create the idea for a project of creating art to represent each one of the 100 stories they are ready to share. The art project forms the structure to the story. The life stories are the meat of the novel.

We learn about their families and why they are both in the hospital. We learn how they each become the person that they are when they meet. Cronin reveals the information in an engaging way. We watch them each learn about love. We watch Lenni and Margot's relationship develop. We get to know other characters, both patients and workers, in the hospital with them.

I'm not sure that I'd recommend the audio book, but I'd highly recommend this novel.
 

Shuggie Bain

I won't lie. Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart's debut novel, was incredibly raw and difficult to get through. The characters weren't particularly likeable, yet my heart ached for all them.

The story which takes place in 1980 Glasgow, Scotland is Shuggie, a young boy who is part of a working class family. At first Shuggie and his parents, Shug and Agnes, live with Agnes' parents in what sounds like a lower middle class apartment building. Shug moves the family away, out to the sticks, to a mining village where the mine has been closed for awhile and most of the miners are on the dole.

How do these people whose lives have taken a turn for the worse survive? Agnes finds solace in the bottle as do many of her neighbors. Drugs are rampant. Shuggie's older siblings find ways to leave the house as soon as they are old enough while Shuggie remains with Agnes, taking on the role of her keeper.  What an incredibly rough life. I felt like I held very little hope for the characters and wondered how they could have felt any hope for themselves.

Shuggie Bain reminded me of a cross between The Crazyladies of Pearl Street and The Glass Castle, two very other difficult books to read. I'm on the fence about whether I would recognize this one or not. If raw and rough are what you're in the mood for, this might be the perfect book.