A Grief Observed Reviews

• Difficult, but somehow comforting for those in grief

  
  By A3AKATT4J8CRLW on 2001-05-13
  Lewis' book (journal, really) captures the feeling of those in grief, there is no doubt about that. June 16, 2000 my wife left this life, 8 weeks to the day after our first child was born. In the midst of our struggle, there were several books that my family and I found comfort in, and this book was one of them.

  I rated this book 4 stars because it's difficult. It's not difficult to read, it doesn't contain long arguments or technical language. The content is hard for those in the throws of grief. And yet it is somehow comforting to know that you're not alone, the feelings that you feel aren't the signs of insanity. I remember several times thinking I was going insane, that I'd finally lost it...only to read those exact thoughts from Lewis' journal.

  Lewis' experience with grief was different from mine, too. I suppose everyone's is different in some way. Lewis is angry with God, and he struggles with his faith. He explains that it wasn't that he was in danger of losing his belief in God, but that he "was in danger of coming to believe such terrible things about him." You may identify with Lewis' words, and I truly believe you'll find comfort in this book.

  If I may, I would like to recommend another book for those who suffer and those in ministry to the suffering, as well. Nicholas Wolterstorff's LAMENT FOR A SON captures the intimate details of grief, and in many ways I identified more with Wolterstorff than I did with Lewis.

  For those who've lost, this book is a difficult and yet rewarding right of passage. You travel down the narrow path, on hallowed ground. You make a journey that those who haven't made cannot speak of, and you can find comfort in the experience of those who travel with you.

  For those in ministry, this book is an excellent insight into the pain of those to whom you minister. Lewis attempts to coldly analyze his grief, and in the end he cannot. He simply expresses his grief without even attempting to gloss over it. The information you can glean from this book for your ministry is immeasurable.

  God bless you as you travel down this long and painful road. Remember, as Lewis did, the hope that will sustain you: God who raises the dead. The journey is difficult, but in the end we will see and hold them again. God be with you.
  
  

• My favorite CS Lewis book...

  
  By A2E7E9EWADK4S6 on 2000-07-20
  After having read several of Lewis' books, I read "A Grief Observed" which quickly became my favorite. It is his journal - and almost too personal - where you bear witness to Lewis' progress as he sloughs his way through the deep mire of sorrow and grief.

  In the first pages of the book, he tells of going to God, seeking relief from the agony he feels in his heart over the fresh loss of his beloved wife, Helen Joy, only to find - the door slammed and the sound of the door being bolted and doubled bolted from the inside.

  He rails against God and his faith is stirred to its core.

  In the end, he finds his way back to God, but it is not an easy journey or a primrose path.

  For all of Lewis' intellectual reasonings and scholarly attainments, I find "A Grief Observed" to be his best work because it comes from the very heart of a man seeking to find the answers to life's hardest questions. It is not a philosophical insight or an intellectual wrangling, but a spirit-filled work that lays bare the heart of a man who loved his wife completely.

  This is an important book. Read it. You'll be changed.
  
  

• An honest book that doesn't try to simplify grief

  
  By A3NIXZNOIRCFAT on 2000-08-18
  This work chronicles Lewis' struggle to come to terms with the death of his wife. Because it comes from his private journals, it may not seem as "polished" as some of his other writings. Personally, I appreciate the way it reveals the innerworkings of a very emotional and private man.

  In contrast to many works, this book doesn't try to simplify grief, justify it, or dance around the issue with pat observations or cheery reminders. Instead, it dares to question those very tactics. Lewis allows himself to feel a broad range of emotions, including doubt and great despair. I love this quality in Lewis: he is one of the few Chrisitian writers who is brutally honest about his fears and anger. His writings allow that God is big enough to handle our toughest questions.

  This little book is full of images and ideas that will stay with you long after you've finished it. Lewis takes feelings that you can't quite pinpoint and eloquently puts them into words. As I read the book, I kept thinking to myself "Yes, THAT'S what I feel too!" Misery does love company, and Lewis is excellent company.

  As usual, Lewis is full of astute observations and points to ponder, but don't expect a bunch of clean and pretty answers. At the end, his grief is still very much a work in progress, which is definitely how it has been in my life....a journey.
  
  

• Accessible Lewis

  
  By A39IGWM90JXKRK on 2006-11-09
  I have found much of Lewis' work to be difficult to wade through - style, content, depth. Always worth the wade, it can still be tedious. "A Grief Observed," a slender volume, is both direct and compelling. Easily read in a couple of hours, it reveals a more human (doubting) perspective of his own journey. Personally, I can identify with the struggle more than the triumph these days.
  This book works through the stuggle of coming to grips with grief over the death of his wife - railing at God, feeling the misunderstanding of friends and disorientation of life and faith.
  It reveals truth that we all move through in resolution of our grief. Not moving too quickly through the process, and ending with yet some doubt I found it genuine, real and felt.
  I used this with a group and enjoyed the discussion as we discussed a chapter a week. Great Introduction and Foreword, as well. Worthy of discussion, too!
  The resource of "Shadowlands" (sreen movie) or "Through the Shadowlands" (BBC film-for-television) are helpful in contextualizing this book. I showed them after we had read the book and was delighted with the insight it gave persons not familiar with Lewis' life and work.
  
  

• A remarkable book of faith

  
  By A2CZPM110DW516 on 2006-12-15
  For a Cambridge professor, C.S. Lewis writes in simple, clear English free of flourish or pretension, and "A Grief Observed" is all the more powerful because of its style. It's a straight-forward account of his struggle with faith in the face of tragedy, and one of the best "self-help" guides available for those dealing with the questions that arise when dealing with the ultimate grief.
  
  "A Grief Observed" is about Lewis' crisis of faith following the death of his wife, poet Joy Davidman, whom he wed in the final decade of his life, well aware she was dying of cancer. Their romance and the tragedy that befell them was later dramatized in the play "Shadowlands," and the subsequent film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.
  
  It's easy to see why Lewis, a famous Christian apologist who also wrote "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "The Screwtape Letters," first published "A Grief Observed" under the pseudonym of N.W. Clark. The brutally honest reactions to tragedy and its effect on his definition of God would have shocked his faithful readers and might have tarnished his reputation. We are taught to love God and accept that He loves us. To question that thesis, or to express anger at God or to doubt his character, might be construed as blasphemy.
  
  Lewis writes that grief feels much like fear at times. "Meanwhile, where is God?" he asks. God is present, or seems to be, when all is well. "But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away."
  
  Lewis does not doubt God's existence, but wonders if the Supreme Being is not what He has claimed to be.
  
  "The conclusion I dread is not 'So there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer.'"
  
  These are not the kind of thoughts that many Christians would ever dare express which is why they are often of little help to those seeking reassurance or balm for their wounds. Too many self-described "Christians" are cliquish and cantankerous, professing a belief in the interest of feeling superior to those on the outside of their faith: "I'm saved, you're not. Na, na, na, na, na."
  
  There is no such boasting from Lewis. Tragedy taught him that faith in God requires hard work, and if C.S. Lewis can struggle with belief, certainly we can, too. A remarkable, comforting book.
  
  Brian W. Fairbanks
  
  
  
• Comforting AND Challenging
  By A13UBI76EAA0W7 on 2001-02-20
  Five months ago, I lost a dear friend and in that time, many have felt compelled to recommend books to me on grief. It is this one, however, that has helped my wounded heart the most. I consider C.S. Lewis one of the greatest minds and authors ever - and to hear his honesty and questioning of God in the face of great tragedy made me realize that all I was feeling was "okay" in a sense. And so I continue through the pain, comforted by the writings of this man, and learning from him as well. I would recommend this book to anyone going through the mourning process. And even if you are not, it is good to read to help identify with those who are.
  
  
• Penetrating Look at Grief
  By A2YI3SU5THQUQZ on 2003-05-24
  When it comes to frank discussion of difficult issues, there's often a sense in which no approach will satisfy everyone. Those who offer a polished examination tend to be met with detractors who don't believe the approach was honest or in-depth enough. Those who offer an unpolished but 'brutally honest' approach tend to be met with detractors who think the 'brutal honesty' is questionable in terms of theological or intellectual integrity and could have stood for more sober reflection before being published. Because of this, a mysterious exchange occurs between writer and reader. When writer and reader aren't on the same page in terms of purpose or expectation, a letdown is usually the result. But on those occasions when the writer and reader make an enduring connection based on similar experiences, attitudes, etc, the result is often profound. While such a result can be dangerous since emotional or attitudinal connectivity is not a valid measure of whether the views expressed have a basis in objective truth or not and thus make belief in error all the more easy, the result, when anchored in truth, is formidable.

  Why do I say all this? Because I think if someone is coming to this book looking for a presentation on suffering that is airtight in its theology, this might be a disappointment. Lewis was no theologian, he was a layman who had an extra-ordinary desire to probe the things of God from the perspective of a layman. As a result, many of his works, while tremendously engaging and insightful, tend to be at least somewhat loose in their fidelity to Scriptural truths, which shouldn't be surprising since Lewis did not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. Nonetheless, this particular effort is one of the most engaging works on suffering and grief from a Christian perspective and its insights should be taken very seriously.

  In this book, Lewis laments the vacuum left in his life by the passing of his wife. Along the way, he ponders out loud about a number of basic issues surrounding the goodness of God, the meaning of life, and the purpose of grief. The early chapters tend to be defined more by a spirit of grief resulting from an unsure anchor. This is the section where many of the particularly engaging musings about God and life are asked and not always answered. In the later chapters, as Lewis has further reflected on the goodness of God and the meaning of grief, his faith anchor becomes more stable, his perspective more secure, and his grief more manageable. This is no accident of course. What we see on these pages is one of the better Christian apologists of the 20th century having the sturdiness of his faith put to the ultimate test, and the result is a very penetrating look at grief from someone not removed from it and analyzing it from a distance, but one who is in the middle of it and is struggling with it personally.

  In the end, the reader might well agree with Lewis that the veridicality of the worldview and value system one adopts is most demonstrated when such things literally become matters of life and death personally. Does it merely work on paper and in the abstract, or is it also a source of absolute truth when brought home to roost in our most desperate hour. This is a formidable test for any worldview, and one that few are willing to honestly grapple with. Lewis does so here, and what we see is a man exposed by his grief, unable to hide behind anything else, and trying to make his worldview make sense in the midst of it. Very penetrating, very honest. A work that should be considered by all, but read with theological discernment.
  
  

• This Book Should be at the Ready for Everyone
  By AUJYOJ2LOK9MU on 2006-12-27
  My first introduction to CS Lewis was his famous Chronicals way back when I was in forth grade. I never bothered to read him again until my husband saw me struggling with comparing myself to other women in our church or to my mother-- God help me, she is a brilliant lady-- and seeing my insecurities rise to levels unknown before (I was pregnant.) He brought me the Screwtape Letters and this man whose life had seemed so far from mine reached to my heart and he spoke with elequence yet reached to my level. We shared them with our children and it's a running joke in our family to say, "Screwtape's been messing with your mind again. . ."
  
  A Grief Observed was one of my husband's gifts to me recently after my dad died. I was having nightmares of his death then becoming saddened in the daylight hours when I realised that I couldn't remember what he looked like. I have been trained in Hospice and counseled people through grief, yet was in shock when it happened to me. When my husband gave me this book, I opened it to a page where CS was talking about how he couldn't remember what his wife looked like, that pictures were meaningless-- once again, he was where I was, on my level with me. In spite of me being Russian Orthodox and CS being western in his thought, his writingis influenced by his search for knowing God, not by any particular church and I appreciate that and can relate to him very well.
  
  I have perused this book many times. When someone dies in our society, there is no prescribed time for mourning for immediate family members. I found that my mother was the one to be comforted more than anything--- as his widow, she deserves that-- but in spite of being an adult child, I still hurt and cry at different times and the hurt surprises me for when it hits. In spite of CS writing about his wife, this is a great companion for "lesser mourners" as well as the main person affected. This book is a great comfort to anyone who experiences a loss of someone they love.
  
  
  
  
• Recorded Grief
  By A1NC9AGZOBI0M1 on 2005-09-05
  C.S. Lewis can almost be described as a contradiction. For much of his life, he was an agnostic, eventually coming to accept Christianity not through any miraculous transformation, but through rational thinking. He was a confirmed bachelor, but wound up marrying late in life, to the American divorcee Joy Davidman, his perfect counterpart in almost every manner. His life was awakened by Joy's presence, but their brief marriage (just nearly four years) was terminated when Joy died of cancer. C.S. Lewis kept track of his thoughts and ramblings after this event in a series of notebooks that became "A Grief Observed".
  
  "A Grief Observed" is at times almost too personal. Lewis leaves nothing hidden, allowing readers access to his anger and his questioning of God. He claims that these are not all his thoughts, merely 'one in a hundred', that he has recorded as he tries to sort through his sorrow and grief. He likens his pain to various metaphors, including that of an amputee who still feels the pain of the lost limb - for Lewis, his lost wife who was part of him. He finds that it is always easy to offer comfort to those who have lost loved ones, to even pray for them, when they are not our loved ones.
  
  He questions God at every turn, eventually finding his way back to faith, seeing this challenge as a test of his faith and love. "God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down."
  
  "A Grief Observed" is a short book, under one hundred pages, filled out with an afterword that is a brief biographical sketch on Lewis by Chad Walsh, an English professor and friend of Joy Davidman. It is a fitting close to Lewis' thoughts, to take a brief look at his life from a man who knew both husband and wife. For someone of such legendary status as Lewis in the academic and literary worlds, it is a unique experience to see his weaknesses. Lewis acknowledges that there is no map that one can make of sorrow, for it is a process that everyone must go through, and it is reaffirming in faith to travel alongside him through his grief.
  
  
• A Journey Through Loss and Pain
  By A2I3I0E3NR5I5A on 2002-06-30
  Lewis wrote this little gem after his beloved wife, Joy, died of cancer. Knowing Lewis to be a man of deep faith and one of the most respected theologians of his day, secure in his beliefs, I was particularly interested in how he would react to such a soul-disemboweling blow. I was not disappointed -- like anyone else, he reeled.

  In A GRIEF OBSERVED, his struggle to regain his balance, physically and spiritually, is not unlike my own.

  Speaking of the grieving process he writes, "At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want others to be about me. I dread moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me."

  He struggles with anger as well as with the things people say to him. His faith is challenged -- he calls God the "great iconoclast," and he speaks of his fears.

  Lewis's rambling style is compatible with the confused and jumbled feelings of the bereaved. His anger, sense of bewilderment and suffocation along with recognition and acknowlegment of the feelings and emotions express the too-often inexpressable.

  This book is a fine and sensitive treatise on the pain of grieving and the soul's journey through the grieving process. I recommend it highly to anyone deep in grief or who is concerned about someone who is grieving.
  
  

• Help in Time of Grief
  By A2KBF2OYR359AJ on 2006-12-07
  This is another amazing book by Lewis, and another that I have read multiple times. I have had to read it for at least three university courses over the last 18 years. This book is unlike anything else that Lewis ever wrote. It is raw, visceral and at times disturbing, unlike most of his other work that is very precise, specific, well argued and clearly laid out.
  
  Recently I heard this story: `Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis's stepson recently released a book about Lewis called Jack's Life. It includes a DVD interview, where Gresham states that Lewis did not intend to publish A Grief Observed; it was a personal notebook. When it was published it was under the pseudonym NW Clark and by a publisher Lewis had never published with. Gresham also said that Lewis received numerous copies of the book as gifts from friends who thought it would help.' That speaks to the power in Lewis's writing; even his friends thought the book would be helpful for him as he journeyed through his grief.
  
  Lewis states in his book The Four Loves: "We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him, throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it." That view is drastically changed when he writes Grief. In A Grief Observed we have a very different approach. Lewis presents a very visceral response to the loss of his wife. An example of this is that Lewis states at the beginning of the book: "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing." This book shows us more of Lewis's own heart and life than almost anything else he wrote.
  
  It is a great book for those dealing with loss - either for yourself or for someone you know and love. It is often used in grief counseling, and one of the courses I read it for was on the spirituality of death and dying. This book is a gem in the cannon of Lewis literature. It will not disappoint.
  
  
• In his grief, C. S. Lewis finds a more deeply rooted faith.
  By on 1998-06-09
  Lewis shows enormous honesty and courage as he writes in this little book, a journal expressing his grief, about his faltering faith in God after the loss of his cherished wife. Despite his lifelong career as a writer of the truth of Christian faith, in this journal he expresses doubt about the very existence of a God who would wickedly deprive him of the greatest gift of his life, his wife. But as the months pass after her death, and Lewis further examines himself, he begins to appreciate the degree of personal selfishness wrapped up in his grief, and in his raging at God. As a result, towards the end of the journal he reestablishes his faith in a much more deeply rooted way. For me, this little book was a cautionary tale. It illustrated how easy it is to have a faith that is not a faith, but rather a mere deception, a contruct made of intellectual effort. When the forces that hold up the construct are taken away, such as what happened to Lewis with the loss of his wife, the intellectual faith will vanish. It is only then that real faith can take root. For faith, to be real, can depend upon nothing but the faith itself: a faith in Jesus. God does us an eternal favor when he takes from us those things we would cling to that are other than Himself.
  
  
• Excellent book by an excellent author
  By A2MW0RYIXMEYGS on 2003-12-03
  Everyone has either experienced a tragic loss of life in the family. Perhaps a death in the extended family, or through a friend who might have lost a loved one. For Christians, grief is an especially tough time, taking them through cycles of questions about whether or not God really does love us when such brutally painful events take hold of us.

  When author Clive Staples Lewis lost his wife to cancer in the 1960's, he was no different than any of us, finding himself asking the same questions about God's goodness and love that a lot of us have. Since Lewis had already lived a full life, his loss was deepened by the lack of promises of future happiness a younger person might find some small comfort in. Yet in the wee hours when his grief and anguish were the most poignant, Lewis - an author all the way - took to filling blank pads of paper in his house with the thoughts and feelings that his bereavement brought.

  Even though I have not personally experienced anything near the kind of grief that this book deals with, I still found this book to be an amazing read. The deepest grief I've ever experienced was the loss of a family pet, yet from that small sampling I can just barely grasp what Lewis went through. Indeed any person not accustomed to grief can begin to understand it by reading the beautiful language that fills the pages of this book.

  It is a short book, ringing in with only four chapters, and 76 pages. Yet all of them are filled with the balm of Lewis's reflections and introspection, and all of them are able to help a grieving person, if for nothing else than to know that they're not alone.

  For any person who might be undergoing a period of sorrow, I highly recommend this book. It is not a lot of heavy reading, thus possibly making it easier on someone who is already in such pain. The wonderfully poetic, graceful language gives body and soul to the multitude of emotions that wash through a grieving person, especially in dark hours. These emotions, I'm sure, are experienced by everyone, but with the comments and insight of one of Christendom's favorite authors, it makes this work a priceless treasure.

  If you, or someone you know is going through a difficult time of loss and heartache, buy this book for them. It is a must-read for anyone in pain.
  
  

• From A Mom Who Is Grieving
  By A2VBRCKF0SW1LU on 2000-07-28
  When my four year-old son, Daniel, in spite of the prayers of many, died in 1997 after cancer treatments, I was angry. I had 'grown up' seeing "A Grief Observed" in my dad's pastoral study but never felt compelled to read it until I was shattered by my son's death. In the pages I related to Lewis' anger at God, his doubt, his fear. As a Christian it is comforting to know other Christians, especially this great man so respected, went through what I went through too. Lewis articulated my feelings about his relationship with God so well. I recommend this helpful book to all who have had to experience an untimely death of a loved one.
  
  
• A tremendously Comforting, yet honest book on grief
  By A2BFVDQTU9Z1L2 on 2001-10-11
  In "A Grief Observed," C.S. Lewis allows the reader to walk with him on his journey through grief. He was a brilliant scholar and Oxford professor whom people looked to for answers and meaning when suddenly his world was turned upside down by the loss of his wife Joy, who died of cancer in her 40s. In the book, he explores honestly the depth of his anguish and his search to find comfort and hope in the midst of the despair of loss.

  He describes many of the multitude of emotions that grief can bring, and also the seemingly endless barrage of unanswered questions he found himself asking. Ultimately he finds comfort and hope in his faith, but not before journey through a time of anguish and questioning God- even expressing his anger and shock at the loss.

  If you have lost a close loved one, or know someone who has, this book may be a great source of comfort in the midst of grief. I facilitate a grief support group, and a number of people have found it to be very helpful in coping with the loss of a family member or close friend. I have also found it to be a helpful source of comfort and hope in facing some of the losses in my life.

  I would highly recommend it to anyone facing grief and loss, as well as for caregivers, clergy and counselors who work with the bereaved.
  
  

• In the End He Falls back on Cultural Myths of Comfort
  By A1BZOAM350RM6T on 2006-03-28
  I approach every CS Lewis book with a great source of expectations. I still remember the wonder of discovering Prince Caspian as a child and the sheer joy of beginning the trilogy in the middle of the series...!
  
  In most of the writing of Lewis there is a lot that people can learn, but there is also a lot that CS Lewis takes for granted.
  
  In dealing with the death of a child (my own personal grief). I may have come from a particularly hard death experience... I think in the grand scheme of things a child's death is a somewhat harder prospect than an adult or elderly death --- in the end we were not born to bury our own children. Their line of ancestry is finished forever. They will never grow up, never experience things that even young adults experience... for especially young children with genetic problems, their mere conception dooms them.
  
  Is there meaning in any of this? If so what meaning? In the end CS Lewis struggles with an environment and cultural milleiu he feels in some ways confines his grief.
  
  To be sure CS Lewis' grief cannot be my grief... or anyone's grief and he does not presuppose so. Some of the topic is however dated: in the early 50s society was more repressed, people were uncomfortable with death and even crying was something that was somewhat shaming for others to witness -- the assumption being that people crying meant one should leave their presence. Society has grown up fortunately. Most people are warm, loving and able to reach out to those in need with little or no sense of embarrassment. That clearly was not the case in CS Lewis' time. So this experience, beautifully related, was of interesting historical note, but little comfort.
  
  Also the central question of meaning is where CS Lewis falls ultimately into a sort of neo-traditional Christian interpretation of suffering -- at the end of the day he believes that man was born into sin and therefore born to suffer. For those raised on such cultural suppositories, the literal translation of the scriptures ultimately is a source of comfort.
  
  Ultimately you must abandon reason to tread the path of Lewis. And it is here that I personally cannot tread. Without going into detail there are just too many contradictions to believe in such a version of a God. Contradictions will continue and cannot be resolved. In that sense maybe Christianity had it right -- we can never resolve such contradictions -- we are born to relive them... over and over... and over in our head and must have the courage to face them and know that there is no apparent meaning in the traditional western christian conception of suffering that makes any real sense.
  
  For me meaning is important, and there must be meaning in the life of such a little girl, or anyone who lived, however short a life. And so... I resolved that I would honour the life and give it meaning within the memory of the living and try as much to construct things that would endure after death. This is really as much as I, or anyone can ever do.
  
  One can surrender to all the balms or "other worlds" but these are not rational constructs. They are cultural myths -- Lewis through grief ultimately swims into the warmth of faith, but it is ultimately a blind leap of logic and something that I could never do without having thoughts I had deceived myself and my deceased daughter's memory. So I honour her with action and rememberance. We place her memories in close contact with us and remember her everyday and make sure that others can do so as well.
  
  Lewis had other ideas and I think that he is a wonderful writer. Some of his struggles I have felt in his writing, but I cannot reach the conclusions he has come to without thinking I have somehow betrayed the logic a supreme being may have endowed me with....
  
  And that is the lot of mankind. Whether Christian or Humanist, we suffer. It is for each of us to make meaning in the madness of life. CS Lewis has his truth... but it isn't mine... I wish his could be mine...
  
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  PS: The introduction by his son is particularly bad with references to "the Devil" as a real entity injecting doubt in grief. This retrograde, medieval interpretation of the Bible certainly is jolting alongside CS Lewis' rather transcendental book -- it should be removed.
  
  
• Lewis coming to terms with God and loss of Joy ( his wife)
  By A1X4JO8EJ1U5BR on 2000-05-16
  A heart wrenching little book by Jack Lewis. Originally a journal to record his feelings and fears, this is a classic trial of faith. Lewis is well known for his apologetics works, his logic, his wit, and his deep sense of Christianity. Yet here, after losing the woman he had come to love so much, everything is thrown into dismay and despair. God gently takes him by the hand, and walks him through this. To hear Lewis, this great Christian brother, rage and acknowledge his doubt during this trial of faith shows us we are not alone in our own trials. To anyone who has lost a spouse, very highly recommended. To anyone going through a hard time in their lives, recommended. God will always be with you, even if you can't see him. Admit your doubts and work through them, with God as your guide. C. S. Lewis called his faith a `house of cards'. If yours is knocked down, let God walk you thru it, and have him build your faith on the firm rock of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He loves you - yield.
  
  
• So high a cost...
  By A2VE83MZF98ITY on 2003-05-16
  C.S. Lewis is perhaps best known for children's stories that also delight adults; however, during his lifetime he was best known as an inspirational speaker, not quite in the same line as modern televangelists, but nonetheless a crowd-pleaser who had subtle but strong theology to share.

  C.S. Lewis was a confirmed bachelor (not that he was a 'confirmed bachelor', mind you, just that he had become set enough in his ways over time that he no longer held out the prospect of marriage or relationships). Then, into his comfortable existence, a special woman, Joy Davidson, arrived. They fell in love quickly, and had a brief marriage of only a few years, when Joy died of cancer.

  This left Lewis inconsolable.

  For his mother had also died of cancer, when he was very young.

  Cancer, cancer, cancer!

  Lewis goes through a dramatic period of grief, from which he never truly recovers (according to the essayist Chad Walsh, who writes a postscript to Lewis' book). He died a few years later, the same day as the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

  However, Lewis takes the wonderful and dramatic step of writing down his grief to share with others. The fits and starts, the anger, the reconciliation, the pain--all is laid bare for the reader to experience. So high a cost for insight is what true spirituality requires. An awful, awe-ful cost and experience.

  'Did you know, dear, how much you took away with you when you left? You have stripped me even of my past...'

  All that was good paled in comparison to the loss. How can anything be good again? This is such an honest human feeling, that even the past is no longer what is was in relation to the new reality of being alone again.

  In the end, Lewis reaches a bit of a reconciliation with his feelings, and with God.

  'How wicked it would be, if we could, to call the dead back. She said not to me, but to the chaplain, "I am at peace with God." '

  Lewis had a comfortable, routine life that was jolted by love, and then devasted by loss. Through all of this, he took pains to recount what he was going through, that it might not be lost, that it might benefit others, that there might be some small part of his love for Joy that would last forever.

  I hope it shall.
  
  

• Strikes deep. Strikes hard.
  By A3NCKDPCAUOD4T on 2005-03-30
  A Grief Observed is a journal C.S. Lewis kept immediately after the death of his wife. It is heart rending. It is frightening. It is more so if one has read any Lewis apologia prior. C.S. Lewis, a man so clear, so forthright in his beliefs, stumbles when that which he cherished most on earth is taken from him. As well he might.
  
  But, Lewis concludes a rousing comeback when he realizes that the suffocation of loss eventually turns to the closeness the passing of time can create. When the stunning horror finally fades, we recommune with our loved one to produce a spiritual unity; a recognition of all we loved, not of all we lost.
  
  Lewis points out that every human relationship ends in sorrow. But, in doing so, he charts a course for every mourner through the darkest nights into the light of day. 5 stars.
  
  
• Help in Time of Grief
  By A2KBF2OYR359AJ on 2006-12-07
  This is another amazing book by Lewis, and another that I have read multiple times. I have had to read it for at least three university courses over the last 18 years. This book is unlike anything else that Lewis ever wrote. It is raw, visceral and at times disturbing, unlike most of his other work that is very precise, specific, well argued and clearly laid out.
  
  Recently I heard this story: `Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis's stepson recently released a book about Lewis called Jack's Life. It includes a DVD interview, where Gresham states that Lewis did not intend to publish A Grief Observed; it was a personal notebook. When it was published it was under the pseudonym NW Clark and by a publisher Lewis had never published with. Gresham also said that Lewis received numerous copies of the book as gifts from friends who thought it would help.' That speaks to the power in Lewis's writing; even his friends thought the book would be helpful for him as he journeyed through his grief.
  
  Lewis states in his book The Four Loves: "We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him, throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it." That view is drastically changed when he writes Grief. In A Grief Observed we have a very different approach. Lewis presents a very visceral response to the loss of his wife. An example of this is that Lewis states at the beginning of the book: "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing." This book shows us more of Lewis's own heart and life than almost anything else he wrote.
  
  It is a great book for those dealing with loss - either for yourself or for someone you know and love. It is often used in grief counseling, and one of the courses I read it for was on the spirituality of death and dying. This book is a gem in the cannon of Lewis literature. It will not disappoint.
  
  
• Not your typical grief book
  By A2UMQT1HJTEQJF on 2002-03-22
  This is the first book I have read of CS Lewis's (amazingly enough!) and it won't be my last. I didn't read this at a time of grief, but rather for a book club. However, I am in the process of signing up as a Hospice volunteer, so death and grieving were in my mind when I was reading "A Grief Observed." C.S. Lewis doesn't pull any punches with his grief or with God. He asks tough questions of what kind of God allows such immeasurable pain, yet seems to not be there when the pain and grieving are at their worst. By reading this, others would feel they have permission to be angry at God, to let out their pain and frustration and anger. A great book, especially for those whose faith development is at a high level.
  
  
• A Realistic and Touching Look at Grief
  By ASJ89T42CIUHU on 2005-02-08
  When suffering from grief who better to place your heart with than C.S. Lewis, the master at heartfelt emotions and faith.
  
  C.S. Lewis wrote this little book during the process of grieving for his beloved wife, Joy. He brings his raw emotions forward and shares the act of grief in a very human and profound message. Showing a variety of emotions he spans the process of mourning and makes the act appear "normal" even when the slightest steps of self-care become a chore. Lewis braves the unthinkable and questions a God that allows despair and refuses to comfort the one left behind. Few would voice this common feeling but Lewis goes beyond simply voicing his doubt and eventually unravels the mystery of faith during the most horrible of times. Jesus Christ even experienced this desolate feeling crying out to God as he hung dying on the cross....so if He must go through such a bitter process why would the average human being expect any different? Realizing this places a perspective on the pain and allows us to stop questioning whether death and loss arrives in a package entirely explainable. It happens at exactly the right time for the one who passes and we must learn to accept this despite our lack of understanding. As Lewis writes so eloquently, "Fate (or whatever it is) delights to produce a great capacity and then frustrate it."
  
  Lewis takes standard thought processes and analyzes the theories behind their meaning and by doing so he helps the grieving process immensely. Hearing how our beloveds are with God causes one to ask, were they not "with God" before they died? And all those prayers said at bedsides and funerals, some with "miracles" attached and others seemingly lost actions are examined by Lewis as a process of torment by God, at once gracious only to prepare another torture in the end. Lewis reveals his anger towards God in hopes of leading to a deeper understanding of what faith really means. Grief becomes an act of desperation according to Lewis and seeing through tears often leads to blurred vision. Grief is merely fear incarnated. Ultimately it is through the observance of the dying that we discover the definitive peace and eventually find solace in faith.
  
  
  
• "A tender heart, a steel-edged mind"
  By A1SPQSV4RXTM74 on 2006-08-20
  In A Grief Observed, the heart of C.S. Lewis has been peeled away, revealing its tender, fragile core--the tender fragile core of a man who fully loved a woman.
  
  Lewis writes, "The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything." (p. 11) Through these few words, Lewis captures for us the depth and breadth of his loss; it is above him, all around him, inescapable.
  
  Added to his longing for his beloved Joy, is his almost palpable grief. "I not only live each endless day in grief," writes Lewis, `but live each day thinking about living each day in grief." (p. 10) Such emotional words, coming from a man devoured by grief, a man who usually writes such logically-driven, clear-headed theological expositions.
  
  And so is revealed to us C.S. Lewis, the man.
  
  Yet even in this time of immense loss, immense sadness, his faculties do not desert him. Lewis' sharp mind cuts through his grief, to once again to dissect theological concepts. Once such concept Lewis dissects is the reality of suffering as it relates to the nature of God.
  
  Lewis says "The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness." (p.43) Lewis then concludes that God must be a surgeon. "But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting." (p.43)
  
  With his rapier-sharp mind, Lewis slices away dead dogma to reveal a sliver of the living truth: God is a surgeon who allows suffering for our healing.
  
  Sandra Eggers
  Author
  Dying Body, Growing Faith
  
  
  
  
  
• A Touching Book that describes a mans grief
  By A2VH7P1PJ6MZ1W on 1999-11-30
  If you are not a Lewis fan, and know very little about the author, then I suggest not reading this book. Lewis describes the agony of grief to a tea. His descriptive writing helps the reader understand what he exactly went through. Though I have not gone through the grief he did, reading this book made me understand what grief is, and made me feel closer to this great Author. Lewis often wrote down what bothered him. It was a way to relieve penned up emotions, and this book is Lewis's writing that helps one see just exactly how he probably felt. I highly reccomend it.
  
  
• An honest look at grieving--a must have
  By AHCVWPLA1O4X8 on 2002-09-23
  I have to admit, when I first started this book I was a little surprised. Wasn't this CS Lewis, the man who could take the most complicated issues of religion and explain them in a way that was simple yet easy to understand? Wasn't this the man who had an answer for everything? Didn't he have some kind of impenetrable armor? I guess not.

  One thing became quickly apparent--Lewis was human. I cannot believe how incredibly candid, how open and honest he was. The death of his wife hurt him deeply and shook his faith, and he was man enough to admit it. The beginning of the book is filled with doubt and questions, yet slowly you can see the change take place. Lewis is rediscovering his faith, and is slowly coming to terms with his wife's death. It's beautiful.

  Lewis obviously published this book because he wanted to help others through experiences such as his. He wanted this to be comforting, and comforting it is. He explores grief and loss like no other man can, and the result is this priceless little gem that helps us remember that it's okay to grieve.

  I cannot think of a more fitting tribute to his wife. By releasing this book, he showed the world just how much she meant to him. I cannot praise this book enough. With this short work, Lewis proves he really does have an answer (or at least the power to come up with one) for everything.
  
  

• CSL comes into his own
  By AYCJSA9HR7TKO on 2004-03-10
  For years I've taught this book in an Introduction to Philosophy course, and my admiration for it increases each time. It's a brutally honest testament in which CSL takes a hard look at his own basic assumptions about life, love, God, Christianity, the world, human relationships.

  Prior to the horrific trauma chronicled in this book (the loss of his wife), CSL had been what I'd call a puglistic Christian. His apologetic writings tended (although not exclusively so) to be a bit heavy-handed and simplistic. Take, for example, his early _The Problem of Pain_. In that book, CSL offers the standard philosophical arguments that attempt to show that the existence of a loving God is compatible with innocent suffering. But he seems to have no feel for the tragedy of suffering. It's a bookish exercise for him, and his ultimate goal is to win an argument. Many of his books are like that.

  But not _A Grief Observed_. Here, for the first time in his published work, CSL comes face to face with a realworld (as opposed to bookish) situation that causes him to reexamine his earlier, perhaps too easy, too glib, Christian faith. His reflections about the terrible silence of God, the awfulness of loneliness, the feeling of betrayal, the ultimate reawakening of the sense that perhaps he isn't adrift in an indifferent universe: all of these are utterly authentic, and as such go far beyond his earlier work.

  CSL's faith after his wife's death is one tempered with the hard realization that a great deal of the tragedy and suffering in life can't be glibly explained away. His relation with God is more dependent, more childlike, than it was earlier. CSL doesn't emerge victorious from the dark night of the soul he chronicles in this memoir. He emerges broken, but his very brokenness makes his relationship with God more genuine. And that's a lesson for us all to reflect on. It makes CSL an utterly lovable man, and it reminds all of us of the perils of taking God for granted.
  
  

• Efficacious
  By A2ACHVOFMAIQ1K on 2006-01-17
  Lewis' "A Grief Observed" is surely shocking to anyone who has read "The Great Divorce" or "The Screwtape Letters". Not merely for the depth of Lewis' crisis of faith, but for the savagery with which he dispatches our common platitudes about loss.
  
  This is one area in which Lewis and I diverge in our experience of the death of our wives. Where Lewis is affronted by assurances of salvation, such realities are a great comfort to me. In most other aspects, Lewis does a remarkable job of expressing the inexpressible, and it makes me want to give this book to those around me so that they can understand.
  
  I continue to be surprised by the extent to which shared experience is reassuring - I do not think I am the kind of person who needs affirmation of my thoughts or feelings. Either the death of a spouse is so traumatic that I am unable to cope alone, or it has peeled off the veneer of my self-reliance. In any case, reading Lewis, with his wonderful capacity for imagery, expressing what I cannot express, has been a great benefit.
  
  "A Grief Observed" feels compressed. It is a quick read, but surely comprises in its unedited form the many pages of manuscript that Lewis references. There are some uncomfortable moments, such as the mention of "the spirtualists" and the strange mental encounter that Lewis reports. But though accelerated, both the maddening grief, and the slow healing, are authentic and bear familiar touches. The loss of value in familiar and once-treasured things, the desire for company with the simultaneous resistance to conversation, the sense of wandering the same landscape and going in circles - I share all of these sensations with Lewis. But reading his description allows me to put my finger on things that are otherwise amorphous and ill-related.
  
  I have to deduct one star from the review as a protest against the (thankfully brief) foreward by Madeleine L'Engle. As I have repeated complained in reviews on Amazon.com, I do not understand the predilection of publishers for selecting the most inapropriate people to write forewards. Prefacing Lewis' work with a writer who complains of the "pre-Copernican attitude toward death" of the church strikes me as an attempt by the publisher to recruit Lewis toward the new-age secular spiritualism that would have been anathema. I have to hope for a future Ignatius Press version with a foreward by Joseph Pearce.
  
  
• A Touching Journey Into The Heart And Mind Of C.S. Lewis
  By AJK5A5PRGHVGS on 2000-02-19
  Originally published under the psyudonem N.W. Clerk, 'A Grief Observed' is probably one of the most personal works of literature by C.S. Lewis to date. I am a collecter of Lewis's works and I do not believe that there has ever been a book that has stimulated the mind deeper and touched the heart more intimantly than this beautiful book has. It is a truly touching journal of Lewis's doubts and fears accompaning the death of his beloved wife, Joy and even if you have never experienced a loss of this nature, you will find it difficult not to empathize with him as he leads you through the personal areas of his own sorrow, grief, and ultimate redemption. A lovely book, and a indescribable experience!
  
  
• His greatest book.
  By A3LPMI7GGRU83E on 2002-09-17
  There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are in grief and those who haven't got a clue. If you're among the latter, I suggest you get down on your knees and thank God, Good Fortune, or whatever you happen to believe for your blessed ignorance. And by all means keep telling yourself your own death is a faraway thing, it'll help you through many a bad night.

  This book is the howling of a poet in anguish. Perhaps the most powerful journal ever written. The jottings of an acclaimed pop apologist who forsakes lame platitudes from well meaning friends and pat answers from the religion he once championed.

  
  
  "It is hard to have patience with people who say 'there is no death' or 'death doesn't matter'. There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth does not matter. I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain than in all those times and spaces if I were allowed to search them I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Why is the word so hard to learn?"

  Amen.

  At the risk of sounding condescending towards theologogical speculation, it is one thing to read the metaphysical musings of a Plato, Thomas Aquinas or Martin Buber and quite another to read of the torments of a Socrates, a Joan of Arc, or a Victor Frankl.

  Here, C.S the theologist disappears and C.S. the husband comes forth. A magnificent work of honesty and courage.
  
  

• Not what I was expecting
  By A3K86WZPAYL190 on 2005-08-16
  Maybe it's because I have reached the mourning period of losing my mother where I no longer want to whallow in it. Maybe it's because I was told by many that although I'm not a Christian, I can take parts from this book; his words of wisdom, despair and light at the end of the book and apply it to my own experience.
  
  Although I didn't lose a spouse like CS Lewis did, I watched my father's pain losing my mother. I had my own pain as well. In reading the first chapter I found myself shaking my head to myself relating to some of his questioning, some of his anger, underlinging some feelings he expressed that felt like my own. This is where I then became annoyed I bought the book. I won't give away the ending, but I will say I didn't find what some said I would.
  
  I found after a few pages everything was related to Christianity. I guess I wanted to read about this man's journey without bible quotes. And to be quite frank, after a while I grew weary of his anger.
  
  I would recommend this book to someone in the very beginnings of mourning. Someone who lost a spouse. Someone is a Christian. For me it was a bit too much and I gave my copy to the library in hopes it finds a nice home. It didn't belong in mine.
  
  

• The Problem of Pain
• The Four Loves
• The Great Divorce
• Mere Christianity
• Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life