Discussion question your group will work through:
1.L'Engle says she is grateful to Lewis for having "the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God in angry violence." What is your instinctive reaction to that phrase? Does it strike you as spiritually healthy, spiritually dangerous, or something else?
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About This Study Guide
A Grief Observed is not a book about grief in the abstract — it is grief itself, written in real time. When C. S. Lewis's wife, Joy Davidman, died of cancer in 1960, Lewis found several blank notebooks in his house and began writing in them — not to publish, not to teach, but simply to survive. What emerged was a raw, unsettling, and ultimately redemptive record of a man's soul being unmade and remade by loss. Lewis — the great Christian apologist who had written so confidently about pain in The Problem of Pain — found himself on the other side of the argument, not as a thinker but as a sufferer. The result is one of the most honest documents of faith under pressure ever written.
This study guide moves through the book's four unnumbered sections (treated here as four chapters or "notebooks"), plus Madeleine L'Engle's introduction, across six weeks of reading and reflection. Each week, you are invited to read the assigned section before your group meets, spend time journaling your personal responses, and then bring your thoughts — including your doubts and resistances — into conversation with others. There are no trick questions here. The goal is not to arrive at tidy answers but to follow Lewis into the darkness and discover what, if anything, is on the other side.
What can you expect to gain? Honest readers of A Grief Observed report that it gives them permission — permission to grieve without pretending, to doubt without abandoning faith, to love without holding back even though love makes loss possible. If you have experienced loss yourself, this book will feel like a conversation with someone who understands. If you have not yet faced serious grief, it will prepare your heart. And if you are walking alongside someone who is grieving, these pages will teach you more about loving them well than almost anything else you could read. Come ready to be honest, to be uncomfortable, and to be surprised by hope.
6-Week Schedule
- Week 1Introduction — Madeleine L'Engle's Preface7 questions
- Week 2Section One — "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear"7 questions
- Week 3Section Two — "The same leg is cut off time after time"7 questions
- Week 4Section Three — "Something quite unexpected has happened"7 questions
- Week 5Section Four — "How wicked it would be to call her back"7 questions
- Week 6Review & Reflection — The Whole Journey8 questions
Week 1: Introduction — Madeleine L'Engle's Preface
Free sampleRead Madeleine L'Engle's Introduction to A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis.
1.L'Engle says she is grateful to Lewis for having "the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God in angry violence." What is your instinctive reaction to that phrase? Does it strike you as spiritually healthy, spiritually dangerous, or something else?
2.L'Engle suggests that Lewis's willingness to admit doubt "gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes." Have you ever needed someone else's honesty to give you permission to be honest yourself? What did that feel like?
3.Lewis is famous as a confident Christian apologist — the author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Problem of Pain. Why might it be particularly significant that it is Lewis, of all people, who writes a book like this? What does his reputation add to — or complicate — the book's message?
a.Does a person's public confidence in their faith make their private doubts more or less meaningful to you?
b.Have you ever experienced a gap between what you believed in your head and what you felt in your gut? How did you navigate it?
4.L'Engle frames honest grief as "part of the soul's growth." How does that sit with you? Is pain something you instinctively try to escape, or something you have learned to let do its work?
5.The publisher's description notes that Lewis originally wrote these notebooks as "a defense against total collapse, a safety valve." Writing as survival — does that resonate with you? Have you ever used writing, prayer, conversation, or art in a similar way?
6.Before you read a single word of Lewis's own grief, what do you bring to this book? Have you experienced significant loss? Are you afraid of what this book might stir up, or are you drawn to it precisely because of that?
7.L'Engle suggests A Grief Observed may become "among the great devotional books of our age" — not despite its doubt and anger, but perhaps because of them. What does that imply about what a devotional book is actually for?
Week 2: Section One — "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear"
Read Section One (Notebook 1) of A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis.
1.Lewis opens with one of the most arresting sentences in the book: "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." What does he mean by that? Have you ever felt the physical sensation of grief — the hollow, the restlessness, the inability to concentrate? How would you describe it?
Week 3: Section Two — "The same leg is cut off time after time"
Read Section Two (Notebook 2) of A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis.
1.Lewis uses the image of an amputee to describe recurring grief: grief comes in waves, and "the same leg is cut off time after time." What makes this image so effective? Have you experienced grief (or any suffering) that felt like it kept starting over rather than gradually fading?
Week 4: Section Three — "Something quite unexpected has happened"
Read Section Three (Notebook 3) of A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis.
1.Section Three opens with Lewis noting that something unexpected has happened — a sudden lightening, a moment of release. He is careful not to over-interpret it, but it marks a real change in the book's atmosphere. Have you ever experienced an unexpected moment of lightness or peace in the middle of ongoing suffering? How did you account for it?
Week 5: Section Four — "How wicked it would be to call her back"
Read Section Four (Notebook 4) of A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis.
1.Lewis ends the book with a striking realization: that to call H. back — if he could — would be a kind of selfishness. "How wicked it would be, if we could, to call the dead back!" he writes. What has shifted in his thinking to make this possible? What does this tell us about what love, at its best, actually wants for the beloved?
Week 6: Review & Reflection — The Whole Journey
Review your notes, journal entries, and underlined passages from all four sections of A Grief Observed.
1.Which of the four sections affected you most? Was it the raw despair of Section One, the self-interrogation of Section Two, the unexpected turning of Section Three, or the hard-won clarity of Section Four? What does your answer tell you about where you are in your own life right now?
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many weeks is the A Grief Observed study guide?
This study guide covers A Grief Observed in 6 weeks, with chapter-by-chapter discussion questions, reading references, and closing prayers for each session.
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The complete guide includes 43 discussion questions across 6 weeks — an average of 7 questions per week, designed for group conversation.
Can I use this guide for a book club?
Yes — the questions are written for group discussion and work well for small groups, book clubs, church studies, and couples reading together.
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