Pip Torrens

1726. Eleven-year-old Stefan Silbermann, a humble organ-maker's son, has just lost his mother and is sent to Leipzig to train as a singer in the St Thomas Church choir.

Stefan's talent draws the attention of the Cantor - Johann Sebastian Bach. Eccentric, obsessive and kind, he rescues Stefan from the miseries of school by bringing him into his home as an apprentice. Soon Stefan feels that this ferociously clever, chaotic family is his own. But when tragedy strikes, Stefan's period of sanctuary in their household comes to a close.

Something is happening, though. In the depths of his loss, the Cantor is writing a new work to be performed for the first time on Good Friday. As Stefan watches the work rehearsed, he realises he is witness to the creation of one of the most extraordinary pieces of music that has ever been written.

 

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 while painting a vivid portrait of her life and their marriage. 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.