Which C.S. Lewis book explores his response to his wife’s death?

A Grief Observed explores C.S. Lewis’s response to his wife’s death.

Lewis published A Grief Observed in 1961 under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk. The short book consists of reflections written after Joy Davidman died of cancer in 1960. It records anger, fear, loneliness, doubt, and the struggle to reconcile grief with religious belief.

The work is notable for its unusually direct tone. Lewis does not present bereavement as a neat spiritual lesson; instead, he examines how grief changes memory, prayer, and one’s sense of God. The rawness of the writing led some readers to assume the author was fictional, although the book was later identified as Lewis’s.

A Grief Observed is sometimes confused with Lewis’s earlier apologetic works. Its purpose is different: it is a personal meditation rather than a systematic defense of Christianity. The book’s four short sections preserve the immediacy of a private journal while asking broadly human questions about love and loss.