“The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten.” — Helen Macdonald
Books on Grief
A reading journey through loss, numbness, and the slow return of feeling.
In the month leading up to the third-year anniversary of my father’s death, I started reading again. More, searching.
It was the same month he had been in the hospital.
The same month we’d spent foolishly thinking he would get better.
I had no idea he would actually die. There was awhile, I felt like the nurses and everyone around had lied to us, that it wasn’t just my own delusion.
After he died, I was numb. Depressed. I had a stretch of weeks where it felt like it was guaranteed that something horrible was going to happen every single week for the rest of my life.
I eventually climbed out of that hole, but I never took the time to sit in it.
I didn’t process it.
It was easier to not think about it.
Three years later, I finally went back — to the loss, and to myself.
These are the books that helped me do it.
I found most through recommendations online, via miscellaneous forums. I want to thank all of those who shared recommendations.
A Grief Observed — C.S. Lewis
An unflinching, almost journal-like dissection of faith after loss. Lewis’s honesty feels like standing next to someone who’s torn the veneer off their own soul. It’s raw, and somehow gentle at the same time.
H is for Hawk — Helen Macdonald
How obsession becomes a vessel for grief. Macdonald’s hawk is both a mirror and a metaphor — wildness teaching her how to live beside pain instead of away from it.
The Year of Magical Thinking — Joan Didion
Didion’s clarity cuts. She writes about the strange logic of loss — how the mind bargains with ghosts, and how reason and madness blur when love refuses to end.
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers — Max Porter
Fragments of poetry and prose. A father, two sons, and a talking crow — absurd, heartbreaking, and strangely comforting.
If the others explain grief, this one embodies it: chaotic, surreal, and alive.
A Monster Calls — Patrick Ness
A book about a boy and a monster that tells him the truth. Written for younger readers, but it hit harder than I expected — the rawness of guilt, denial, and the fear of accepting death.
Reflection
Reading these wasn’t catharsis — it was contact.
Each book helped me hold a different side of grief: faith, obsession, madness, surrealism, and finally, acceptance.
They didn’t make the pain smaller. They made it realer.
And in that honesty, I started to feel something new again — not the absence of grief, but the return of life around it.