A Grief Observed
by C. S. Lewis
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Book Summary Information
Author: C. S. LewisBrand: Harper Collins Publishers
Foreword: Madeleine L'Engle
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2001-02-06
ISBN: 0060652381
Number of pages: 76
Publisher: HarperOne
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780060652388
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of A Grief Observed
Book Review: C.S. Lewis's notes (... about a very personal grief)
Summary: 4 Stars
(¤ thank you for reading this review and for your vote ¤)
INTRO:
"In April 1956, C.S. Lewis, a confirmed bachelor, married Joy Davidman [known as H. in the book], an American poet with two small children. After four brief, intensely happy years, Lewis found himself alone again, and inconsolable. To defend himself against the loss of belief in God, Lewis wrote this journal, an eloquent statement of rediscovered faith. In it he freely confesses his doubts, his rage, and his awareness of human frailty. In it he finds again the way back to life" writes publisher on the back-cover.
I read this book while mourning my grandmother, and I did not find the book as comforting as I thought it would be. I wished so much to give this read a 5 stars like the majority of reviewers, but I cannot, for the following reasons: a) the jacket over-promises (of "comforting thousands" and "will be a comfort and inspiration to anyone who has ever lost a loved one"), b) archaic and difficult language, c) short bursts of argumentation without much fill-in explanations and randomness of thought (no clear pattern). Allow me to explain the "+"es and "-"es of these reasons in the context of the book with examples, as found under CONTENT.
Also, C.S. Lewis's notes on grieving (the 4 chapters that make up "A Grief Observed") provided me with some good meat for thought, for my soul, and some great QUOTES (see CONCLUSION section).
AUTHOR:
Most people are familiar with who C.S. Lewis is (a short wikipedia search will provide most info necessary).
EDITION:
Bantman Books, 14th printing in 1988, with an afterword by Chad Walsh. This edition contains the 4 chapters of C.S. Lewis's grieving notes (pgs.1-89) followed by "another book" - "Afterword by Chad Walsh" (pgs.93-151) where Chad (an American professor of English and poet) gives us a very upclose & personal biography of C.S. Lewis as a close friend.
CONTENT:
"The notes have been about myself, about H. [Joy Davidman Lewis], and about God." confesses C.S. Lewis pg.71 - chapter IV. The book is broken into 4 title-less chapters (probably the areas where C.S. Lewis took breaks). He starts the book with the line "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear" and goes on discussing his emotions and thoughts and also fears (is God a bad one, a "Cosmic Sadist" - pg.43,45; do the departed also mourn; normalcy sets in again in one's life).
a) overpromises -
The four chapters provided me with a picture into C.S. Lewis's mind and emotions. Some of these I could related to, but others were a bit convoluted, distant, or confusing. I believe that each one of us GRIEVES personally and we also draw strength from our community. Being CONSOLED, finding your way through your BEREAVEMENT is a very personal process. Many of us will probably never ask the questions or bring up the arguments found in this book, but nevertheless, they help in having a broader picture on GRIEF.
b) language -
C.S. Lewis is the Cambridge professor who wrote the textbook for Middle Ages Literature, so as such be expected to find lots of "vacuity" when the text "geometrizes" your vocabulary and "vivisects" your word knowledge. C.S. Lewis also makes some use of mythological figures and contemporary personalities in his analogies (Amazon, Penthesileia, Camilla, Queen Victoria). Also, one should be up on their Bible knowledge (Solomon, St.Paul, Stephen the fist martyr, and Lazarus). Knowledge of Latin is esential to understand the last sentence of the book (pg.89) - "Poi si torno all eterna fontana" - a quote from Dante's Paradise and means "then she turned back to the Eternal Fountain." But if you feel that you are caught in "culs de sac" (pg.55) you are not alone. Some annotations by the publishers would have been helpful.
c) argumentation and randomness of thought -
Again, these are the notes of a great literary mind, but that does not mean that they follow logically or have been organized for easy digestion. Even C.S. Lewis admits, after a retrospective reflection "Why do I make room in my mind for such filth and nonsense?" and "these notes the senseless writhings of a man" (pg.38 - chapter II). Make no mistake about it, C.S. Lewis will take you on a very interesting journey where he analyzes various thoughts, feelings, moods, emotions, and doubts. Sometimes his arugment is pure madness if not simply blasphamous ("We set Christ against it. But how if He were mistaken? .... " paragraph in chapter II, my pg. 34). Some arguments are very terse, others long-winded and with some tangents. They all reflect the mind, spirit, and soul of a grieving person.
CONCLUSION:
Bottom line is, this book is no easy thing to read, let alone understand everything read. Although it must be said, it is a great book to have discussed in a reading club, or for anyone grieving a loved one.
The wONDERFUL QUOTES alone are worth the price:
Chapter I
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." (pg.1)
"Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything." (pg.11)
"You can't share someone else's weakness, or fear or pain." (pg. 13)
"nature never plays exactly the same tune twice." (pg.16)
Chapter II
"The most precious gift that marriage gave me was this constant impact of something very close and intimate yet all the time unmistakably other, resistant - in a word, real." (pg.20)
"You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death." (pg.25)
"the past is the past and that is what time means, and time itself is one more name for death, and Heaven itself is a state where 'the former things have passed away' " (pg.28)
"Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand." (pg.28)
"Aren't all these notes the senseless writhings of a man who won't accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it?" (pg.38)
"It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on." (pg.38)
"Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness." (pg.39)
Chapter III
"Grief is like a bomber circling round and dropping its bombs each time the circle brings it overhead; physical pain is like the steady barrage on a trench in World War One, hours of it with no let-up for a moment." (pg.47)
"My love for H. [Joy Davidman Lewis] was of much the same quality as my faith in God" (pg.48)
"You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can't, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately" (pg.53)
"passionate grief does not link us with the dead but cuts us off from them" (pg.64)
"the less I mourn her the nearer I seem to her" (pg.66)
"For in grief nothing 'stays put' " (pg.67)
Chapter IV
"Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape." (pg.69)
"If you are approaching Him [God] not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him [God] at all." (pg.79)
"this is one of the miracles of love; it gives- to both, .. a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted." (pg.84)
"God. His love and His knowledge are not distinct from one another. .. He sees because He loves, and therefore loves although He sees." (pg.84)
"We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand least." (pg.89, 3rd last paragraph).
(¤ thank you for reading this review and for your vote ¤)
Summary of A Grief Observed
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 record of how even a stalwart believer can lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he can gradually regain his bearings.
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
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