You are a very visual writer, there are so many colours and images scattered through your book. Do you have a background or any special interest in visual arts?
Whoever marked my GCSE art ‘portfolio’ would tell you I have no business being an artist, but I love colour and art. There are a lot of people in my life, past and present, who I associate with certain colours or items or images. When I had the idea of Lenni and Margot’s friendship growing from an art-therapy class, I went to some painting-while-drinking-wine classes and they gave me a sense of how it might feel to be in an art class. （Lenni’s frustration at not being able to paint what she can see in her head came from my own feelings!） I also collected online pictures of amateur art, to get a feel for the kind of things Lenni and Margot might have made.
You get into the heads of two characters who are at opposite ends of the age spectrum. Are you interested in cross-generational friendships? What appeals to you about the potential of such a relationship?
I love the idea of two people becoming friends despite being at completely different points in their lives. I think inter-generational friendships offer so much opportunity for sharing. It’s not just the case that Lenni is learning from Margot, but Margot is learning from Lenni. I remember years ago someone telling me that they felt the same inside at forty as they had at eighteen – their body was ageing, but who they were essentially as a person remained the same. I thought that was really interesting. Although Lenni and Margot have sixty-six years separating them, who they are fundamentally is unchanging and their personalities are inherently compatible. Each is exactly what the other needs in a friend. The same is true of Arthur and Lenni. There is a big age gap between them and they have completely different world views, but they become friends without even trying. It’s a natural reaction.
Your book is full of delicious humour. Do friends know you as funny, or do you reserve that for your writing?
Oh gosh, I think you’d have to ask them! One of the things that surprised me when The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot was being read by people outside my immediate family was that they kept mentioning it being funny. I didn’t intentionally set out to write a funny book. Sometimes Lenni would come out with something that would make me smile （usually when talking to Arthur）， but finding that people have found it funny has been a really nice surprise.
I’m blessed to be surrounded by entertaining friends and family, and I’m lucky to spend time around funny people through the improv scene in the West Midlands. Doing improv is like writing a story on a piece of paper that’s already on fire. By the time you’ve finished, the whole thing is gone for ever and you can never step back and see it as a whole. That felt almost wasteful at first, at first, but it’s taught me to jump into ‘without overthinking them so much’。
Marianne Cronin was born in 1990. She studied English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University, before earning a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham. She now spends most of her time writing, with her newly adopted rescue cat sleeping under her desk. When she’s not writing, Marianne can be found performing improv in the West Midlands, where she lives. Her debut novel The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot is to be published around the world and is being adapted into a feature film by a major Hollywood studio.