Tell Me Good Things: On Love, Death, and Marriage

This is a heartfelt memoir about Marilyn Imrie, a deeply loved wife and apparently accomplished theatre director, who died at age 72, within five months of her ALS diagnosis. It strikes me as a book that would have far more meaning for those who actually knew Imrie in life than a memoir for a general readership. Runcie, the author of The Grantchester Mysteries, writes that he hopes the book may provide comfort for those going through something similar, but I can’t quite see its doing that. There are regular allusions to plays, works of art, flowers, wines, fancy meals, fashion designers, shoe styles, soccer teams, operas, Scottish actors—I could go on—with which I—and I suspect many others—have little or familiarity. To me, show more Tell me Good Things felt a great deal longer than it is, and I wonder if the writing of it ought to have been delayed. It’s evident that it was composed, at least in part, to come to terms with a great loss.

The memoir consists of recollections of everyday sorts of things from James and Marilyn’s somewhat unusual marriage—Marilyn was 12 years older than her husband. Many of the details reported seemed very superficial to me. I felt I had little real sense of Marilyn as a person. What made her tick? There were certainly insecurities, and a coworker mentions her “desperation” at one point, but we are offered no insight into those things. There’s also no information about her childhood and little about her actual work. We’re told she liked wearing dramatic, attention-grabbing clothing, but hated having her photo taken. Hmmm. Why? She wanted to appear saintly (but apparently was not). Again, why?

I am, of course, saddened to think of anyone suffering as she did—a matter that James, her husband refrains from going into here—because this is, of course, about “telling the good things.”

If you’re acquainted with the Scottish theatre scene or Runcie’s other books, you may appreciate this more than I did. show less