Tell Me Good Things

Starred review from December 5, 2022
A widower turns grief into a profound appreciation of his wife’s legacy in this poignant elegy. British novelist and playwright Runcie (The Grantchester Mysteries) recounts the 2020 death of his wife, Marilyn Imrie—an audio-theater director for the BBC—of motor neurone disease, an incurable ailment that causes creeping, fatal paralysis. Runcie offers a clear-eyed account of her agonizing decline alongside intimate glimpses of his nearly unhinged grief at her death, but also passionately remembers Imrie’s life: her generosity, ebullience, and occasional prickliness; her colorful outfits; her wit (“Henry James ‘always chewed more than he bit off,’ ” she quipped); and her influence on his writing as a coach and editor. Runcie entwines beguiling digressions on everything from Victorian mourning customs to the philosophy of soccer fandom among his evocative vignettes of their life together: “There we were, eating pizza and using Chekhov to talk about the comedy and pathos of everyday life, the desire of the characters to be more than they were, the disappointments of those who felt that life had passed them by, and how to make the future a realistic possibility rather than a dream.” The result is that rare thing, a moving exploration of a great marriage and its ability to nourish the mind and heart. Photos.

December 15, 2022
A husband mourns his late wife. British novelist, TV producer, and playwright Runcie, whose books include the Grantchester Mysteries series, pays homage to his wife, Scottish producer and director Marilyn Imrie (1947-2020), who died of motor neuron disease, with a deeply emotional memoir of their 35-year marriage and a moving meditation on grief. Imrie was a warm, vibrant woman, as devoted to her husband and daughters as she was to her thriving career. Their life was filled with "Hospitality, Elegance, Literature and Friendship." The diagnosis, which came after protracted waiting and visits to specialists, was devastating. The disease, Runcie explains, "is the degeneration and death of the specialised nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord (motor neurones) which transmit the electrical signals to muscles for the generation of movement. It is a form of slow and inexorable paralysis." The progression of symptoms is unpredictable, but the prognosis is inevitable. The Covid-19 pandemic added to their problems: Renovating their flat to adapt to Imrie's care proved difficult when a lockdown limited access for builders, carpenters, and electricians. Runcie recounts his mounting frustration as he watched her become weaker and weaker, losing the ability to walk, speak, and swallow. "She hated everything that was happening to her," he writes. "I couldn't foist my opinions and expectations upon her or help her to come to terms with what was happening." He hated what was happening, too: "I could not stand it." Overwhelmed with loss after her death and angry at facile remarks that some people offered as consolation, Runcie took to writing as a way to keep her close: "I thought of what it might be like not to be haunted, but to be accompanied. To have a happy ghost as it were, a blessed ghost, someone who was there and not there." They had worked together on so many projects that, he says, "it was almost as if we were writing it together." Sorrow imbues a tender, intimate memoir.

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