My friends fall into two main camps: Reading Friends with whom I discuss books continually and Non-reading Friends who chat to me about other things. The RFs and the NFs don’t seem to have much in common if they meet. RFs, six of whom share the dedication in my own latest book Unheard Voices: Tales from the Margins of Literature, often suggest titles for this blog.
And that was how I stumbled across Marianne Cronin’s moving, compelling debut novel which was published in 2021: one of my RFs spotted it in her local library.
It tells the story of two lonely women, both terminally ill in a Glasgow hospital. Lenni is seventeen and Margot is eighty-three so between them they have a hundred years of memories. When they meet, and hit it off, in the hospital art room, they decide to record their memories in paintings as a shared project. It’s a simple enough plot and yet in Cronin’s hands it has more layers than an onion – and nearly as many tears. It isn’t a gloomy book, however. In places it’s very funny.
Lenni, who is half Swedish and therefore bi-lingual, has a troubled background. Her parents aren’t around and she’s a loner though no choice of her own. Her voice is sharp, sardonic and her personality is prematurely aged by her predicament. Her burgeoning friendship with the patient, bemused hospital chaplain, Arthur, is skilfully nuanced as she wickedly challenges his Christian conformity and uncovers his vulnerability. In an interview at the end of the novel Cronin reveals that Lenni’s very distinctive voice came to her fully formed in the middle of the night quipping about the difference between being “terminal” and passing through one at an airport. It provided the novel’s opening chapter.
Margot’s roller-coaster life meanwhile has brought her a bereavement from which she has never recovered, two very different husbands and a woman named Meena. All this is gently and gradually unfolded in a mixture of first person “present day” narrative by Lenni interpolated with recollections which they both narrate. The story telling is complex but beautifully controlled, complete with one or two satisfying twists.
Other engaging characters we meet along the way include sympathetic, decent Pippa, who runs the art class, New Nurse who is Lenni’s main carer, Margot’s fabulous second husband, Humphrey (oh my, that account of the initial onset of Alzheimers!) and the ebulliently attractive Meena. There’s a lot of caring humanity and benevolence in this uplifting story.
It’s obvious, or at least the reader assumes it is, how a novel about two dying people has to end. Actually Cronin springs a surprise. Yes, of course some things are inevitable but sometimes there are unexpected developments and a glimmer of hope even in the grimmest of situations. And I wasn’t remotely surprised to read that Cronin herself had a brush with potentially life-limiting illness which provided the stimulus for this novel.
I recommend it warmly.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Frontline Midwife by Anna Kent
Cohen, Bernstein, Joni & Me continues at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London until 1 February 2026.
