A Grief Observed

Genre : Book ( Paperback )
Release : 2001/02/06
Price : $8.63

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C.S. Lewis joined the human race when his wife, Joy Gresham, died of cancer. Lewis, the Oxford don whose Christian apologetics make it seem like he's got an answer for everything, experienced crushing doubt for the first time after his wife's tragic death. A Grief Observed contains his epigrammatic reflections on that period: "Your bid--for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity--will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high," Lewis writes. "Nothing will shake a man--or at any rate a man like me--out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself." This is the book that inspired the film Shadowlands, but it is more wrenching, more revelatory, and more real than the movie. It is a beautiful and unflinchingly honest record of how even a stalwart believer can lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he can gradually regain his bearings. --Michael Joseph Gross

There are those who consider this book to be too "maudlin" or too unsettling. But I know of no other source that comes closer to what grief is. When I read this book I thought of past grief in my own life, and how very acutely Lewis describes certain things that I have never been insightful or clever enough to put into words. By sharing in Lewis's experiences with the loss of his wife, and his recounting of the long process of coming to terms with that tragedy, I was able to glean a great deal of comfort. Lewis's awareness and keen perception continue to astonish me as I read his work (and mostly lately this book). Even when he describes or posits things he admits uncertainty about, he does so in ways that nevertheless make you feel like you're getting closer to the substance of difficult emotions and questions. I highly recommend this book to those who are having and have had major suffering in their lives.

This is the best book ever written to comfort surviving partners after the death of a spouse.

Dr S E Neil
Clinical and Family Psychologist

Excellent character study, but it is poorly written. Understanding the author is difficult but well worth the effort

C. S. Lewis was a man with a passion for thoughtful words. Having read parts of this book in Lewises compilation, "A Year With C. S. Lewis" coupled with a family death at a young age. We could feel his emotion and shared in his and our grief.

the book was helpful on grief. to watch someone go through grief, i knew i was not alone.