A Grief Observed

“C.S. Lewis's raw notebooks written after his wife's death appear in Popova's writing on grief and honesty. She values the book for its refusal to arrive at neat consolation — Lewis's faith is shaken and only partially recovered, which she treats as more honest than resolution.”

“C.S. Lewis kept a journal in the weeks after his wife Joy died of cancer. Published under a pseudonym, it is not a theological consolation but a raw record of how grief nearly destroyed his faith, then reconstituted it differently. Pairs naturally with Didion — both are about the mind's attempt to narrate an absence.”