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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 242.4
EAN: 9780060652739
ISBN: 006065273X
Label: HarperOne
Manufacturer: HarperOne
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 96
Publication Date: March 29, 1989
Publisher: HarperOne
Release Date: March 29, 1989
Studio: HarperOne

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.com Review:
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

Product Description:


Written with love, humility, and faith, this brief but poignant volume was first published in 1961 and concerns the death of C. S. Lewis's wife, the American-born poet Joy Davidman. In her introduction to this new edition, Madeleine L'Engle writes: "I am grateful to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God in angry violence. This is a part of a healthy grief which is not often encouraged. It is helpful indeed that C. S. Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul's growth."



Written in longhand in notebooks that Lewis found in his home, A Grief Observed probes the "mad midnight moments" of Lewis's mourning and loss, moments in which he questioned what he had previously believed about life and death, marriage, and even God. Indecision and self-pity assailed Lewis. "We are under the harrow and can't escape," he writes. "I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace."Writing A Grief Observed as "a defense against total collapse, a safety valve," he came to recognize that "bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love."



Lewis writes his statement of faith with precision, humor, and grace. Yet neither is Lewis reluctant to confess his continuing doubts and his awareness of his own human frailty. This is precisely the quality which suggests that A Grief Observed may become "among the great devotional books of our age."






Rating: - A Grief Observed
The person I bought the book for enjoyed the book and praised the information on grief.

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Rating: - A Grief Observed
After the loss of my husband it was suggested that I read this book. It is a book that should be read several times to get the full impact. Lewis goes through several mood changes in his journal and only after reading this book did I fully realize I shared many of the same feelings in my grief journey. Madeleine L'Engle wrote the foreword and it should also be read after the loss of a loved one.

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Rating: - C.S. Lewis Classic
Heartfelt and gripping. This genra is one that is hard to put your mind around, however it is something we must witness and cope with. Read this if your stuggling with loss.

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Rating: - sad but inspiring
Easily the saddest book I have ever read, C.S. Lewis' book A Grief Observed is his journal he wrote after his wife Joy died of cancer.
It was the first time in his life that he had experienced such a sudden jolt of pain and it is evident in his words that he was completely lost. Lewis' faith was tested and he shares his doubts and anger towards God with readers.
"What chokes every prayer and every hope is the memory of all the prayers H. and I offered and all the false hopes we had. Not ... Read More

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Rating: - If you have lost the love of your life
When my husband died after a long illness, someone recommended this book. One of the hardest parts about beginning to grieve is putting your feelings into words. C S Lewis does so here in his memoir of losing his beloved wife. This quick read helped me make sense of what I was feeling and that I was not alone feeling like this. I give it as a gift to people who suffer and extreme loss.

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