A Grief Observed
Selected Book Details
- Paperback
- Edition: 1
- Author: C. S. Lewis
- Publisher: HarperOne
- Release Date: February 2001
- ISBN-10: 0060652381
- ISBN-13: 9780060652388
- List Price: $11.99
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryC.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 |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
A Grief Observed
Rating: 
Excellent character study, but it is poorly written. Understanding the author is difficult but well worth the effort
"A Grief Observed"
Rating:
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.
a grief observed
Rating:
the book was helpful on grief. to watch someone go through grief, i knew i was not alone.
Interesting Perspective
Rating:
The language of the day makes this little book a bit cumbersome to read. However many of the points made in it were ones that mirror my own experience as I walk through the grief process of losing my husband and soul mate. I thought the preface gave interesting information about the author and his relationship with "H". The used price for this book made it a good purchase for me. I am not sure I would buy it new unless I wanted it for a permanent library. I am on my second read of it and I have found that to be beneficial for me, as I am picking up new insights. I'd recommend this if you are grieving and you like to read or if you are studying the author. If reading is not your thing I would probably bypass it because of the writing style.
The books own title says it all...
Rating:
This was a deeply personal book about the intense grief Lewis was feeling after losing his wife. This book was written 20 years after The Problem of Pain (see note below), and begun less than a month after losing his wife Helen to Cancer. For the three years prior to her death, Lewis had nursed his wife and watched her slowly die. His thoughts on pain have become quite personal now. He is a grieving Christian man, suffering deep pain at the loss of his wife, his friend, and his lover.
The book is a collection of thoughts that he wrote, and as Lewis says, "sometimes yelled" into his notebooks. It is a brief yet powerful summary of what he describes as "one tenth of the thoughts" during his period of mourning. Lewis is a profoundly spiritual man who has spent the better part of his career telling the world about the beauty, grace, and consolation of the Christian faith, but in this work you see him as man wrestling with his own faith, doubting not only everything he has believed, but regretting the platitudes and consolations' he has said in the past to other people to comfort their pain. He recoils at the kind words of well meaning friends who mindlessly repeat memorized messages of hope and strength in God, the kind so often heard in funeral parlors and read in greeting cards. He refers to his own faith as a "house of cards", tumbling at the slightest breeze.
He learns about the cycle of sadness and the awful pangs of guilt one feels when, just for a second, they almost forgot to grieve for those they've lost. He wrestles with all of the emotions of grieving while trying to comprehend his own feelings of spiritual doubt and self doubt.
Ultimately, his faith once again begins to sustain him. He brings The Lord into his suffering, and he begins to realize that his grief and sorrow were actually keeping him further away from honestly remembering his wife, and truly seeing her in his heart. He learns how to remember his wife without recreating her through distorted memories and imaginings. Finally, he comes to find peace. This little book documents that journey, to the extent that he has allowed us to see.
This is a book for those who are suffering. It is for those who have lost someone so near to them that the thought of going on without them seems unbearable. I believe that Lewis' very personal and blatant honesty will help those who are suffering with their own struggles and doubts of faith. Perhaps if they read it completely, they will be comforted in the knowledge they too can find their way back to a loving God, and that they will find Him waiting with opens arms.
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NOTE: Prior to reading this book I reviewed C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain. I mention this only because many people confuse these two books, and they really couldn't be more different. I ultimately reached the conclusion that that particular work belongs more in the "Exploring Christianity" section than in the "Healing" section. To the best of my limited ability I made the case that Lewis' approach to discussing the pain and evil in the world were strong, compelling, and theologically beautiful, but perhaps bit impersonal to be considered appropriate for someone actively in a period of personal suffering. Please refer to that review for a further explanation.
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