After his wife died of cancer, CS Lewis wrote about his experiences during that period of doubt and sorrow in a journal that was eventually published as A Grief Observed. The quintessential moving-on book, it is a short yet poignant account of the author's reflections on life, death, love, and hope in the midst of personal loss.

An excerpt:

"Getting over it so soon? But the words are ambiguous. To say the patient is getting over it after an operation for appendicitis is one thing; after he's had his leg cut off is quite another. After the operation either the wounded stump heals or the man dies. If it heals, the fierce, continuous pain will stop. Presently he'll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg. He has 'got over it.' But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and perhaps pretty bad ones; and he will always be a one-legged man. There will be hardly any moment when he forgets it. Bathing, dressing, sitting down and getting up again, even lying in bed, will all be different. His whole way of life will be changed. All sorts of pleasure and activities that he once took for granted will have to be simply written off. Duties too. At present I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg. But I shall never be a biped again."

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CS Lewis has been described as "one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably the most influential Christian writer of his day." He wrote more than thirty books, but is probably best known for the series, The Chronicles of Narnia.

A Grief Observed by CS Lewis. Published by HarperCollins San Francisco, February 2001.