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A Grief Observed

A Grief Observed

A Grief Observed

A Grief Observed

by C.S. Lewis

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  • Paperback
Condition
Like new
ISBN 10
0060652845
ISBN 13
9780060652845
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About This Item

C. S. Lewis' classic confession of near-despair and rediscovered faith probes the issues of life, death, and hope in the midst of loss.

Synopsis

“ A Grief Observed comprises the reflections of the great scholar and Christian on the death of his wife after only a few short years of marriage. Painfully honest in its dissection of his thoughts and feelings, this is a book that details his paralyzing grief, bewilderment and sense of loss in simple and moving prose. Invaluable as an insight into the grieving process just as much as it is as an exploration of religious doubt, A Grief Observed will continue to offer its consoling insights to a huge range of readers, as it has for over fifty years.” From publisher Faber and Faber.

Read More: Identifying first editions of A Grief Observed

Reviews

On Apr 21 2012, Judy_Croome said:
In the last year, I've experienced a spate of close family deaths, but Lewis’ A GRIEF OBSERVED is a personal diary I could relate to only fleetingly. Perhaps his sincere grief, and its intensity, is different to my grief because, thankfully, I haven’t yet lost my own much-loved spouse. While Madeleine L’Engle’s introduction was an erudite and emotional expression of her grief after losing her husband of 40 years, Lewis’s first two chapters were too angrily self-absorbed and incoherent for me to gain any comfort or connection with his writing. To his credit, he appears fully aware of this, and expresses his own doubts about his painful intellectual ramblings about what is, in truth, a purely emotional experience. “Do I hope,” he says on Page 32, “that if feeling disguises itself as thought I shall feel less?” And later, on Page 36, he says, “Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead.” I was left with the impression that, in his obvious shock at losing his beloved H, despite all their prayers, he turned to his outstanding intellect for succour, and found none.Reflecting the social era in which he wrote it (1960), and his own genius (he was an Oxford Fellow), there are also hints of social and intellectual elitism in this book. Lewis’s disparaging dismissal of a labouring man’s grief for his Mum (Page 21 and 51) did expose certain personal attitudes to people he considered intellectually and socially beneath him.But then, like grief itself, this is a very individual book. Lewis’s grief cannot be mine, and vice versa. I’m left with a mild sense of distaste that such a personal diary was ever published and wonder why Lewis agreed to publish such an intimate and, at times, hostile reflection of his private experience of loss.However, the last two chapters, when Lewis has clearly begun to find his emotional balance again, did provide some interesting and challenging thoughts on death, the process of grieving and God. Observations such as the small gem “Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process,” made the book worth finishing.

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Details

Bookseller
Pacific Arbor US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
10049
Title
A Grief Observed
Author
C.S. Lewis
Book Condition
New Like new
Quantity Available
1
Binding
Paperback
ISBN 10
0060652845
ISBN 13
9780060652845
Publisher
Harperone
Place of Publication
San Francisco
This edition first published
1994-12

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