Reading
Books worth the effort
A short list on purpose. You will not be able to read much in the first months, and that is normal — concentration is one of the first things grief takes. Nothing here will tell you to look on the bright side.
For understanding what is happening to you
Early on, the most useful thing is usually not comfort — it is finding out that the memory loss, the 3am panic and the physical exhaustion are ordinary. Fear of your own mind is its own separate weight, and these books lift it.
It's OK That You're Not OK
Megan Devine
The best single book for the first months. It refuses the idea that grief is a problem to be solved and spends its time explaining what is actually happening to you. Also the best thing to hand friends who keep saying the wrong thing.
Understanding Your Grief
Alan D. Wolfelt
The book that breaks grief down properly — plain and gentle about what is happening in the body and the mind. Suitable from about age 14. There is a companion journal, and the two are meant to be worked through together, a chapter at a time.
Bearing the Unbearable
Joanne Cacciatore
Short chapters, each one standing alone, from a researcher who also lost a child. Good for the days when you can manage two pages and no more.
On Grief and Grieving
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler
The source of the five stages — worth reading precisely because it says outright that the stages are not linear, not required, and not a checklist. Most people have only heard the distorted version.
Option B
Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
Sandberg on returning to work and raising children after her husband died suddenly. Most useful in months four and later, when the practical rebuilding starts.
For the faith side of it
Written by Christians who did not tidy it up. None of these will tell you it happened for a reason.
A Grief Observed
C. S. Lewis
Lewis kept notebooks after his wife died and published them almost unedited. He doubts God, rages, and writes the famous line about grief feeling like fear. Short, and the least tidy Christian book on grief ever written — which is exactly why it helps.
A Grace Disguised
Jerry Sittser
Sittser lost his mother, his wife, and his daughter in a single car accident. He does not explain the loss away or claim it was worth it. One of the few Christian books on suffering written by someone with no incentive to be glib.
Lament for a Son
Nicholas Wolterstorff· especially for the loss of a child
A father writing after his 25-year-old son died climbing. Short fragments rather than chapters. He never resolves it, and refuses every comfort that would require pretending.
For not feeling insane
Someone else describing the irrational parts out loud, so you know you are not the only one.
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion· especially for losing a spouse
Didion on the year after her husband died at the dinner table. Precise about the irrational parts nobody admits to — keeping his shoes because he would need them when he came back.
For particular losses
Some griefs carry questions the general books do not touch.
No Time to Say Goodbye
Carla Fine· especially for losing someone to suicide
Suicide loss carries a shame and a set of questions ordinary grief books do not touch. Fine lost her husband and writes for people carrying the why alongside the loss.
The Bereaved Parent
Harriet Sarnoff Schiff· especially for the loss of a child
Direct and practical about what happens to a marriage, to surviving siblings, and to friendships after a child dies. Old, and still one of the most honest.
Tear Soup
Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen· especially for families with children
A picture book that adults end up reading twice. The best tool there is for explaining grief to a child in the house without lying to them.
Buying one of these for someone else rather than reading it yourself? The same books, written to the person choosing rather than the person grieving — including which ones do harm handed over too early — are on best books to buy for a grieving loved one.
There are no affiliate links on this page and we earn nothing from these recommendations. Check your local library first — most of these are on the shelf, and grief is expensive enough already.