Tell Me Good Things

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What to expect

‘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

Critics Review

  • James Runcie’s account of losing his wife to MND is vivid, bleak and wonderful… Where Runcie is excellent is in laying bare his own grief, its narcissism and the ‘bizarre freedom’ is gives him not to care anymore… As an instructive examination of how to find hope in the thralls of depair, Tell Me Good Things is a wonderful addition to the literature of bereavement – and it is most definitely not just for its writer

    SUNDAY TIMES

  • 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

  • Tender, heart-breaking and funny by turns. Marilyn’s vibrant character leaps off the page

    CHURCH TIMES

  • A touchingly honest and tender memoir … Runcie generously fulfils the promise of his title … because his memoir is full of good things: stories that reveal Imrie’s sharp intelligence, her bold fashion sense, her glee at pricking the bubble of pretension

    THE TIMES

  • Praise for James Runcie: ‘Runcie has the gift of the born storyteller

    DAILY MAIL

  • Runcie has an expert imagination

    HILARY MANTEL

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