Customer Reviews
No self-platitudes: simply raw - By: A. foley, 18 Sep 2008 
CS Lewis looks death into the face; he does not flinch & does not console himself with platitudes. He had lost the love of his life & his pain is palpable to the reader. This is a raw & honest book but it is not at all depressing: At the end of the book, Lewis begins to recover: his wish is simply that, on his own death bed, his lover will come back to him & give him the consolation of seeing her face again.
Help in Time of Grief - By: Steven R. McEvoy, 02 Apr 2008 This is another amazing book by Lewis, & 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 & at times disturbing, unlike most of his other work that is very precise, specific, well argued & 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 & 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 powerin Lewis's writing; even his friends thought the book would be helpful for him as he journeyed through his grief.
Lewis statesin his book The Four Loves: "We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherentin all loves, but by accepting them & offering them to Him, throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, & if He chooses this as the wayin 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 flutteringin the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing." This book shows us more of Lewis's own heart & 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 & love. It is often usedin grief counseling, & one of the courses I read it for was on the spirituality of death & dying. This book is a gemin the cannon of Lewis literature. It will not disappoint.
Heart-breakingly honest on suffering; but what about the Fall? - By: Betty Watson, 06 Jan 2008 
I re-read this book recently & would recommend it to anyone working through grief. However, I would dare take issue with two things.
1) I was struck by a glaring omissionin the way Lewis deals with the issue of human suffering. He starts off by wondering whether God is a 'cosmic vivisectionist' because he allows suffering &in the end finds some resolution & declares that He is not, since he uses suffering for our benefit, to refine us. Yetin this analysis he misses out the supremely consoling fact that God is not responsible for suffering. We, mankind, through Adam, are responsible for suffering & death, through our own sinfulness & disobedience to God (the Fall, Genesis 3). In God's perfect creation there was no suffering & all was 'good' [Genesis 1 & 2]. Thus, although God may allow suffering, & even use suffering, it is not, as it were, his plan... And suffering & sin is only tolerated by himin the interim between Jesus' death & the last judgement, out of mercy (2 Peter). Because the alternative would be to stop suffering right away by ending the world now.
2)Lewis seems to believein the idea of purgatory, which is not really Biblical.
I was a bit surprised by the two facts outlined above - perhaps the issue of suffering is dealt with more fullyin Lewis' book on the subject.
However, I still think it is a useful book, because of the sheer, brutal honesty of the self-analysis & the lucid writing.
Lewis coming to terms with God and loss of Joy ( his wife), - By: Mike London, 02 Nov 2007 A heart wrenching little book by Jack Lewis. Originally a journal to record his feelings & fears, this is a classic trial of faith. Lewis is well known for his apologetics works, his logic, his wit, & his deep sense of Christianity. Yet here, after losing the woman he had come to love so much, everything is thrown into dismay & despair. God gently takes him by the hand, & walks him through this. To hear Lewis, this great Christian brother, rage & acknowledge his doubt during this trial of faith shows us we are not alonein our own trials. To anyone who has lost a spouse, very highly recommended. To anyone going through a hard timein their lives, recommended. God will always be with you, even if you can't see him. Admit your doubts & 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, & have him build your faith on the firm rock of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He loves you - yield.
Originally issued May 16, 2000 on Amazon.com
Most Tender Courage of a Grief Examined - By: Zinta Aistars, 17 Jul 2007 "A Grief Observed" is just that, an observation by immersion, recordedin a journal by C.S. Lewis with the great courage it requires to open one's heartin complete vulnerability whenin its most raw state. It begins with a listing of physical symptoms of grief - the sense of fear, or something much like fear,in the pit of the stomach, the yawning of an expanding void, the constant swallowing, as if trying to digest & wash away this immense emotion so difficult to process. From the physical, Lewis movesin closer & with more intimate observation on this thing called grief, struggling to cope & understand. Struggling to survive. Struggling to be transformed & healed.
To understand this particular struggle, one must understand the love Lewis has lostin the death of his wife. Theirs was a short but meaningful union, one begun as a friendship that only later, after the vows were taken, moved into a love known only by true partners. Rather than modern day reversals -in which lust is too often mistaken for love, & a friendship often does not enter the union at all, & so quickly crumbling without basis to build upon - this couple has the order right. Only true friends can blossom into love. Love grows from the intimacy of knowledge of another being, & this is what this couple has enjoyed, why the one left behind now knows such immense grief. Lewis's grief is deep & now resonates for the remainder of his own life as a constant companion where his wife once was.
Few can expressin words so well what,in some variation, all of us feel. Lewis is a master with words. His bring healing - to himself, & to those of us who many years later are still graced with his wordsin our own struggles of loss.
"The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, & it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H's lover. Now it's like an empty house."
Lewis talks of favorite places, visiting them again, but now without her, & finds his ache does not increase or diminish with place; he aches everywhere. His wife was like a lens through which all places, & all life, was processed for him. He talks of his loneliness, & yet simultaneously, his inability & often lack of desire, to communicate with others about his grief. And still, he says, he longs for the company & comfort of others. If only, he writes, they would go on about their own business & their own conversations around him without directly including him. Just be near him.
A large part of Lewis's struggle, as a man with a deep Christian faith, is his need to understand death & God's rolein it. Indeed, much of this slim journal is about a man nearly losing his faith, or walking away from it, & then not only returning to it, but returning to a faith strengthened by its testing.
"Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself & turn to Him with gratitude & praise, you will be - or so it seems - welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, & what do you feel? A door slammedin your face, & a sound of bolting & double bolting on the inside...
"Not that I am (I think)in much danger of ceasing to believein God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him..."
Who of us have not asked such questionsin times of suffering? Lewis articulates all our doubts, surely. During any kind of pain or loss, & not justin terms of death, it is human nature to cry out to God & shake a fist at the heavens, daring, wondering, questioning, demanding, even threatening, crying out for answers & response, often feeling like we get none. Lewis describes what answers he does find, what responses he eventually feels, once he is ready for it, over the coming days of his observed & processed grief.
Yet one can never return to what was. Rant & carry on as one must, but there is no return. The dead remain dead, the living, still living. "Did you ever know, dear, how much you took away with you when you left? You have stripped me even of my past, even of the things we never shared. I was wrong to say the stump was recovering from the pain of amputation. I was deceived because it has so many ways to hurt me that I discover them only one by one. Still, there are the two enormous gains... turned to God, my mind no longer meets that locked door; turned to H., it no longer meets that vacuum..."
Change is gradual, Lewis writes, & subtlein its progression & healing. One day, you notice you are coping better. Not quite sure when the transition happened, but it has. He is connected with both love & Godin a new & changed way, faith restored, & he makes it clear that he will from now on be a man "with an amputated limb" where his wife once was, forever crippled by her loss, yet he has (re)new(ed) reason to live. In terms of his faith, he has come to realize that one cannot be a Christianin order to be reunited with one's loved ones after death, for faith does not work that way. Faith is about union with God, first & foremost. Have an ulterior motive of reunion with family, & the connection with God instantly crumbles. Yet through his grief, Lewis acknowledges another life lesson learned, & thus a new intimacy with God. And it isin reaching this new place of peace that he realizes, remembers, the peace he witnessedin his loved wife's eyesin dying. It is,in the end, his greatest act of love, then, to let her go, & to go on.
