What did you read when you were younger?

I completely understand where you’re coming from. It’s a really common experience for readers to revisit books they loved as children and view them through a completely different lens as adults. The Christian allegories and themes in the Narnia books are certainly explicit, and it makes total sense that they might feel jarring or intrusive if that isn't something you enjoy or resonate with anymore.

For me, while the apologetics are undeniably central to C.S. Lewis’s writing, I still find a lot to love in the series. I tend to appreciate them as timeless, imaginative fairy tales rich with a sense of wonder, atmosphere, and classic adventure. Lewis had such a wonderful gift for world-building, creating characters like Reepicheep or Puddleglum, and capturing that bittersweet feeling of nostalgia and growing up.

I tend to look at the religious elements as simply a core part of Lewis’s personal voice and vision, much like how mythologies inform other classic fantasy worlds. Even if the underlying theology doesn't speak to me in the same way, the messages about courage, loyalty, kindness, and redemption still feel genuinely warm and meaningful.

That said, I totally respect how your perspective on them has shifted over time, it's always interesting how our relationship with the stories we grew up with evolves as we do!

C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed stands as one of the most raw and honest accounts of bereavement ever written. Originally published under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk to protect his privacy, the book comprises Lewis's personal journal entries following the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, from cancer in 1960.  Famous for opening with the iconic line, "No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear," the work abandons tidy, polished theology. Instead, Lewis lays bare his disorienting shock, anger, physical numbness, and spiritual crisis as he struggles to reconcile his profound suffering with his faith in a loving God.  

Rather than offering neat answers, the text captures grief as a messy, unpredictable, and evolutionary process. Over time, Lewis gradually moves toward a quiet acceptance not by resolving his questions, but by realizing that sorrow is simply the price of true love. Concise yet devastatingly insightful, this book remains a compassionate companion for anyone navigating the deep waters of loss.