Tell Me Good Things
‘A tender memoir of the challenges of bereavement ... I closed this book wishing I’d met her – but feeling that I almost had’ Daily Telegraph
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A memoir of a husband's grief, and an unforgettable portrait of a marriage; a profound examination of sorrow, and a great celebration of love - by the Sunday Times-bestselling author James Runcie
James Runcie’s wife Marilyn Imrie died in August 2020. Their thirty-five year marriage had been miraculously happy – until, in the last two years of Marilyn’s life, she descended into the pain and humiliation of motor neurone disease.
In the wake of her death, Runcie stumbled in the dark. How do you make sense of the decline and death of the most alive person you have ever met? And how do you go about building a life worth living in their absence?
In Tell Me Good Things, Runcie tells the story of Marilyn’s illness and death – in all its moments of tragedy, rage, farce and surrealness – while painting a vivid portrait of her life and their marriage: a partnership defined by a shared love of beauty, conviviality and storytelling. And during that first year of loss, he awakens to the strange paradox of grief: that the way to survive Marilyn's death is to understand how very good she was at living.
Tender, funny, profound and deeply true, Tell Me Good Things is an unforgettable story of life before death – and love beyond the grave.
‘A touchingly honest and tender memoir' The Times
‘A wonderful addition to the literature of bereavement’ Sunday Times
James Runcie is an award-winning film-maker, playwright and literary curator. He is the author of twelve novels that have been translated into twelve languages, including the seven books in the Grantchester Mysteries series. He has been Artistic Director of the Bath Literature Festival, Head of Literature and Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre, London, and Commissioning Editor for Arts on BBC Radio 4. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in Scotland.
www.jamesruncie.com
www.grantchestermysteries.com
@james_runcie