A Grief Observed
by C. S. Lewis · first published 1961
50% recommend50% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Short, candid meditation on losing a spouse, valued for its honest account of grief's setbacks and its emotional catharsis. Recommended to anyone working through bereavement, especially after a recent loss.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Written after his wife's tragic death as a way of surviving the "mad midnight moment," A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis's honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss. This work contains his concise, genuine reflections on that period: "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 a beautiful and unflinchingly homest r
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C.S. Lewis' 'The problem of pain', and 'A grief Observed' I think is relevant, even if you are trying to avoid reading apologetics. I would definitely consider reading Julian Jaynes' 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' in this…
on “Ask HN: Best books on the psychology of religion?” ↗Someone here recommended The Problem of Pain and A Grief Observed, and I would add Mere Christianity and The Four Loves.
on “Ask HN: Best books on the psychology of religion?” ↗C.S. Lewis - A Grief Observed "Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything." I lost someone very close to me in my early 20s. Reading through the grief C.S. Lewis went through after he lost his wife was very cathartic. There…
on “Ask HN: Which book/essay changed your life?” ↗See also perhaps A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Grief_Observed * https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20150436 (Canada public domain) * http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/PDFs/GriefObserved_CSL.pd...
on “The Strangeness of Grief (2019)” ↗A little longer (76 pages), but A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis is also worth checking out: * http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/PDFs/GriefObserved_CSL.pd... (Canada public domain) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Grief_Observed * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26077627-a-grief-observe...
on “I love my wife. My wife is dead (1946)” ↗One of the most famous examples being C.S. Lewis himself, his book A Grief Observed (written after his wife passed) being one of the most clear examples of it. On a slightly related note, there's an excellent film adaptation about C.S. Lewis's relationship with his wife called Shadowlands,…
on “I'm an addict” ↗…always? — how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, “I never realized my loss till this moment”? The same leg is cut off time after time.” ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
on “Losing my son” ↗So weird that I started reading C. S. Lewis’ “a grief observed” yesterday and today this popped up on hn. Your comment and OP’s thread made me go from a lurker to registering an account. I was 2.5 years old when my brother was born with complications, brain damage…
on “Losing my son” ↗Davidman had a lot of influence on the writing of "Till We Have Faces," but it was published before her death. "A Grief Observed" is the book Lewis wrote about the grief that followed.
on “Of mice and men and Magdalen: C. S. Lewis’s Oxford” ↗Not very impressed with the writer: CS Lewis was impressed enough with JRRT that the character of Ransome in the Space Trilogy is based on him. And Shadowlands was probably based on the book “A Grief Observed” , which was not mentioned. Further the Space Trilogy mentioned multiple times Lewis’ dread of bureaucracy including the NICE being an agent of evil and Studdock’s wrongful desire to be part of the in…
on “Of mice and men and Magdalen: C. S. Lewis’s Oxford” ↗