UC Book Club - One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

This email is just a reminder to hold on to the last of summer by joining the UC Book Club when we discuss One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin on Wednesday, August 5, at 4:30 pm via Google Meet.  Lenni is 17 and living on a terminally ill ward at Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital.  In an art therapy class, she meets Margot, who is 83 and waiting for a heart transplant.  When they realize their collective years add up to 100, they decide to take on an ambitious project:  100 works of art to represent their entire century of life.  The novel explores not only friendship but also grief, faith, love, and growing old.  Kirkus Reviews calls the book "a whimsical, joyous portrait of the end of things."  Harper's Bazaar says the book is "animated by a willingness to confront life's obstacles and find a way to survive. . . . It celebrates friendship, finds meaning in difficulty and lets the reader explore the dark places while always allowing for the possibility of light."

And coming up in September, date TBA, is Good People by Patmeena Sabit.  This novel addresses the current (constant?) human tendency to only believe the facts that fit one's own opinion.  The Sharaf family seem to be living the life every immigrant dreams of upon coming to America.  Then a tragedy happens, and everybody weighs in.  The novel has multiple narrators, what New York Times guest reviewer Tommy Orange calls a "polyphony of outsiders" in a format reminiscent of a movie, a documentary, or even social media.  The Amazon blurb meant to get us to buy the book says, "Good People compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page."  Orange concludes his New York Times review with this:  "They say reading is dying, and maybe it is. But works like this one will ensure there will always be a place for what novels alone can achieve."  The novel has already appeared on The New Yorker's Best Books of 2026 list.

As always, email Kathy Fish at Kathy.fish [at] ucumberlands.edu (Kathy[dot]fish[at]ucumberlands[dot]edu) if you're not already on the Google Meet invitation list.