About this title: Lewis's journal is a testimony to his confrontation with the numbness of grief and the temptation to lose faith, written after the death of his wife in a straightforward and deeply personal voice.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Bantam Books
Date Published: 1994
ISBN-13:9780553274868ISBN:0553274864
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Light edge wear to soft cover. Moderate page tanning from age. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 160 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Books
Date Published: 1999-08
ISBN-13:9780553148404ISBN:0553148400
Description: Very Good. Very Nice! Very Nice Condition. Tight Binding, clean pages. Some shelf and mild cover and edge wear. Thank you for your purchase, which helps the inner city youth. Satisfaction Guaranteed or Your Money Back! Thousands of satisfied customers. Selling books for 20 years. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperOne
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780060652739ISBN:006065273X
Description: Acceptable. A readable copy. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (the dust cover may be missing). Pages can include considerable notes-in pen or highlighter-but the notes cannot obscure the text. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Bantam
Date Published: 1983-03-01
ISBN-13:9780553274868ISBN:0553274864
Description: Fair. Softcover in very good condition, minor shelf wear to cover only, very small amount of highlighting, non-smoking home, clean text, binding tight, Christian business. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: HarperOne
Date Published: 1994-12
ISBN-13:9780060652845ISBN:0060652845
Description: Good. G+, front cover has some creasing else there is very light wear to the covers, previous owner's name on endpaper else interior is clean, binding tight. read more
"This short book (you can easily read it in less than 2 hours) gives us a side of CS Lewis we don't see in his other books. Though some of his logic is still there, we get a rawer, emotional Lewis who is questioning the goodness of God after his wife's death. A highly recommended book, especially for those interested in the problem of suffering. This book could be read along with Problem of Pain, his more philosophical reflections on suffering written 20 years earlier, as the two come from different life contexts and look at the issue from distinct angles. Problem of Pain is for philosophers, but A Grief Observed could be read by people who are actually facing suffering for it speaks more to real life."
"I read this when my boyfriend and I broke up because I experienced the break up as deep loss and grief and I needed help understanding it. Lewis speaks a lot about "faith" in this book. I loved his discussion of the strength of a rope. He says, "You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you." He goes on, "It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box, but suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?" I've thought of this analogy many times since I read the book.
Another reviewer reminded me of another passage about how it is not just a matter of experiencing the misery of grief, but it's also experiencing the misery of thinking about how miserable you are.
It is a wonderful choice for anyone wanting (or needing) to explore grief."
"This is not a bad book, but as a fan of Lewis' apologetics (Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, etc.), I found this one falling a bit short of Lewis' other nonfiction in terms of accessibility to the average reader. In the book, Lewis relates the story of the emotional aftermath of his beloved wife's death, the depths of sorrow he endured and the test of faith this sorrow presented.
The rawness of his pain definitely comes through, but as someone who has (thankfully) not yet had to endure such a devastating loss, I had difficulty relating to, and connecting with, what he was saying. I have bought the book as a gift for grieving friends and family however, and without exception they've said it was a very welcome and helpful book to have at the time."
"I read this book for the first time something like four years ago. Me, like everyone else who had gone through the loss of a beloved, will surely recognize the same emotions that Lewis describes. It's not easy to give a rational review of this book. It's something like a mirror, reading that words make you feel like Lewis had been looking into your heart when he wrote it. But this is not only a portrait of a loss. It would be reductive to say that he only speaks about his pain. First of all, the main theme is love. May I say it is about Love. It's because that love existed that it could be "lost". It's moving the way he talks about his wife and I don't think there will ever be a woman who doesn't want that kind of love. Friendship, complicity, loyality, honesty, protection, this and much more was what formed their relationship. Lewis talks about his two major loves: God and his wife. He asks that question everybody who have been in pain had at least once asked to God: why? And he does get angry. He does get sad, he does scream through ink on paper. He screams about his suffering and ours. But yet, this is not a book about pain. There is fear. There is hope. It's not bitter, it's bittersweet, since through screams he understands that a goodbye is not forever, through anger he understands that nothing is really over. That she is not really over, she is not really dead till he has got that everlasting hope to rejoin the ones we loved. The book comes near the end with an appointment: she'll be there when it will be his time. It's quite funny the way she says that neither Heaven or Hell could stop her. And then the book ends leaving you with a little sad smile, a bittersweet emotion which is a mixture of hope, fear, sadness and courage. This book helped me a lot in my darkest days. We know he used to say that you become friend with someone saying "you too". That's why I use to think about him like a friend, a mentor, a man who wasn't just an intellectual but also a man who was able to touch the human heart in its most wounded spots without fall in the mere complaining. I suggest this book to anyone who have suffered the same things even if sometimes it takes bravery to look in the mirror of your suffering, but once you had you had found a new friend and new hopes."
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