The Grieving Eye: A Compendium of Love and Loss

by Lena Atoug

What does it mean to lose a father and then a country?

Lena Atoug's memoir is the story of a carefree childhood doubly fractured – first by a father's death, then by war. It charts her journey as a migrant through a world of new languages and customs, navigating adolescence, loneliness and lack of belonging.

Told with lyrical honesty and grace, this is a poignant meditation on identity, survival, trauma, memory – and the search for home, wherever it may be found.

200 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 14, 2025

Reviews

[Clarisse · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir with a purpose!
This was such a beautifully written and inspiring memoir. Lena and her family’s journey from her native Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to England. I was immediately captivated with Lena’s family and how each story was intertwined with previous and future events. Lena allowed us to see into her home life. Her honesty was so inspiring and I was so moved by her story.

It’s a tale of survival against all odds, and the loneliness and struggles of being displaced from everything that she once knew. After a while, when you return to your own country, you don’t feel it is the same as your home anymore, and you are never gonna see your second country as home also. Being an immigrant in a foreign country is not easy and that’s the harsh realities of being a foreigner.

Lena writes with such intense passion and honesty. The themes explore loss, love, family and grief.

This should be a mandatory read for everyone, so they know what it’s like being a refugee or being an immigrant. It’s not an easy way out. They lost their country and their home.

Memoirs always swell my heart, and the bravery to share one’s story is truly an accomplishment and also a gift the world. If there’s one thing I learned from reading memoirs, it keeps me grounded in the fact that we are all incredibly different, with different struggles, experiences and stories to tell.

Thank you again Lena for sharing your story.



⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
4.5 amazing stars from me

[made_for_reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished this and it’s definitely a book that will say with me for a long time.
Such a beautiful book on race, belonging, war, hope, love, adaptability and individuality and most of all grief.
Such an eye opening story on how grief can change your life and very being in a way that you wouldn’t expect. Then having to go through the process of foster care and loosing your homeland to war while the world just watches from a tv. Having to go through life in a new country and learning new languages and find yourself when you were already feeling lost to begin with. It has definitely given me a whole new perspective and I really do think everyone should read this book! Especially in this world we live in at the moment. This book will sit with you for a while and I am so glad I got the opportunity to read this. My heart has cracked a little but it’s worth it.

[Fatguyreading · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Grieving Eye is a tender, moving, beautiful tale of love and loss, of despair and redemption, in this memoir of a hopeful childhood lost.

We follow Lena's story, from the death of her Father, to the ravages of war, to her traumatic experiences of life as an immigrant in another country.

It's a tale of survival against the odds, and of the struggles and loneliness that can come with the harsh realities of being an immigrant.

Want to know more? Be sure to pick your copy up to find out.

All in all, this was such a thoughtful, thought-provoking read, that I really did relish.

The characters are believable and truly feel real, and the writing is wonderfully descriptive and genuine.

I read this in two sittings.

4 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 's from me.

[Sarah Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Review: The Grieving Eye: A Compendium of Love and Loss
by Lena Atoug

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.2/5)

Overview
Lena Atoug’s The Grieving Eye is a poignant and lyrical exploration of grief, love, and the fragile intersections between them. Blending memoir, poetry, and philosophical reflection, Atoug crafts a meditative work that transcends conventional genres. The book’s 206 pages unfold as a series of vignettes and prose poems, each dissecting loss with surgical precision while honoring its ineffable weight. Atoug’s voice is both tender and unflinching, offering readers a compass to navigate the labyrinth of sorrow without prescribing easy answers.

Themes and Content

Atoug’s compendium grapples with universal yet deeply personal themes:
-The Duality of Grief: The book interrogates grief as both a solitary burden and a connective tissue between lives, challenging binaries of presence/absence and love/loss.
-Embodied Mourning: Atoug’s imagery—eyes, hands, breath—anchors abstract emotions in the physical, rendering grief tactile and immediate.
-Cultural and Mythic Resonance: Subtle nods to folklore and ancestral memory elevate personal narratives into collective testimony, though a deeper engagement with cultural specificity could have enriched this dimension.
-Time’s Elasticity: The nonlinear structure mirrors grief’s disjointed temporality, where past and present collapse into “a room without clocks.”

Writing Style and Structure
Atoug’s prose is spare yet luminous, with a poet’s attention to rhythm and silence. Her fragments and white space act as literary analogues for absence, inviting readers to lean into the unsaid. While this stylistic choice amplifies emotional resonance, some sections risk obscurity, demanding rereading to unpack layered metaphors. The compendium format allows for thematic breadth but occasionally sacrifices narrative momentum.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths:
-Emotional Authenticity: Atoug’s refusal to sanitize grief lends the work raw power.
-Innovative Form: The hybrid structure defies genre constraints, mirroring grief’s formlessness.
-Philosophical Depth: Questions about memory, legacy, and the limits of language linger provocatively.

Weaknesses:
-Accessibility: The abstract style may alienate readers seeking concrete narrative or self-help guidance.
-Pacing: Certain repetitive motifs (e.g., ocular metaphors) verge on overuse.

Section Scoring Breakdown (0–5)
-Emotional Impact: 5/5 – Unforgettable in its vulnerability.
-Literary Craft: 4.5/5 – Lyrical but occasionally opaque.
-Originality: 4/5 – A fresh take on grief literature.
-Thematic Cohesion: 4/5 – Loosely threaded but thematically unified.
-Reader Engagement: 3.5/5 – Demands patience but rewards it.

Final Verdict
The Grieving Eye is a luminous, challenging work that refuses to tidy grief into platitudes. Atoug’s artistry shines brightest when she balances abstraction with grounded detail, offering flashes of clarity amid the fog of loss. While its experimental form may not suit all readers, those willing to sit with its silences will find a profound companion in mourning.

★★★★☆ (4.2/5) – A haunting and necessary addition to the canon of loss.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author, Lena Atoug, for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, it’s been described as a memoir, a series of vignettes, a compendium on grief and a set of short stories. I suppose it is all of those things but it’s also lyrical, poetic, serious, playful, moving, interesting and easy to read. I flew through this book, the chapters are short, her way of expressing herself varies and you want to read on because she’s such a good writer. Her descriptions of childhood memories, of the seasons and nature were wonderful also.

Lena is from the former Yugoslavia and due to civil war became a refugee. She tells us a little of her family’s background but she doesn’t focus on their history but on their characters, their losses and the way they made her feel. She also describes the lead up to her leaving her home in a similar way. I have no idea as to her ethnicity or first language and in a way I sense that was done on purpose because the focus is on her experience and not on the labels we place on ourselves and others. Whilst reading this I could imagine the same feelings going through some of the Ukrainian children that joined our school or how the refugees from Syria, Sudan or Gaza might be feeling. So it’s not a memoir in the traditional sense.

The biggest event to impact the author was the death of her father when she was a child. You can feel the despair, lonliness and confusion of that child but it’s not written in a way that puts you off from reading, her pain is real and raw but it’s not relentless to the reader if that makes sense? A beautiful book that I will read again and again.

It’s a very unique book and I enjoyed it immensely.

ARC ebook, received in exchange for an honest review.

[Roz Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a beautifully written and moving memoir. Lena's journey from her native Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to the shores of England was so challenging and terrifying. It really opens your eyes to how difficult it must be to be torn from everything you know and understand, to be thrust into a hostile alien landscape. In the current climate of hating anyone who dares to be different, I found this a very powerful read and I think it should be on the national curriculum!

Lena writes with such honesty and shares some poignant moments of her life. The themes explore loss and grief, love, family, trauma, what it means to belong, war and conflict, displacement and what it means to be home. It will stay with me for a long time.

As a social worker who works within fostering, Lena's thoughts and experiences of foster care really made me think about the challenges children face and how they need to be made to feel welcome, wanted and loved. This is something already known, but to hear her experiences of feeling that 'home' could be taken away from her at any moment was so powerful. 

I also have to point out the beautiful cover!

I cannot recommend this highly enough. The book is available from the 14th of August.

Huge thanks to the author, publisher and Novel Tours for providing a copy of the book to review.

[What-Rian-Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

The grieving eye is a memoir of loss and love. the story of a child who is fractured by the loss of her father and then a country to call home. It is also much more than a memoir it is a lyrical, poetic and poignant discovery and exploration of grief, race, war, hope, adaptability and the dark side of facing so much grief at a young age.

The book is beautifully descriptive transporting you to view Lena’s experiences growing up, from the unique memories of her early childhood home, to the layers of trauma from losing her father at such a young age. I could feel her pain in the writing as she meticulously details how her body and mind mentally and physically changed with the loss. Amazed by the coping mechanisms implemented by such a young child.

To then lose her remaining stability of family and home due to war, being passed through foster family’s thousands of miles from home. Alone, non-English speaking and an outsider judged from the stories of her home on the news, having been sent away in hopes of a better life. Young, alone, judged and forgotten for being different and unknown.

This book is a triumph in showing the determination and perseverance of a young girl navigating childhood and early adulthood having suffered more trauma than any child should. The use of childhood memories, poems and poetic reflections make for a brilliant read which brings Lena’s uniqueness to her memoir.

This book will sit with me for some time, with so much to reflect on. A 4.5 star read (rounded to 5).

[cosylittlereadingcorner · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The un-countried are usually light on belongings but they carry worlds you will never know; they hold their lost land like jewels sewn into the lining of a coat, like photographs stuffed into pockets, like hastily scooped handfuls of earth. The un-countried always travel with a baggage that is both heavy and invisible. We carry the weight of our lost histories, we carry our stories and our names that no one can pronounce properly.”

This memoir, charting the life of happy young girl through the grief of unexpectedly losing her beloved father at a young age and then displaced due to the Yugoslavian civil war, is a piece of exceptional writing. It is hard to put into words all the emotions this book made me feel and how beautiful it is. It isn’t conventional in its writing and therein lies its beauty: it’s lyrical and there are so many sections I highlighted so I can look back on them.

Its importance in highlighting what it means to be displaced due to war, to try and be accepted in a country thereafter that is not your place of birth and to be seen and loved for who you are and what you’re capable of and not for what has happened to you couldn’t be more relevant in the world we live in today. And whilst it clearly contains heavy themes, it is written with tenderness and compassion, the themes almost displayed like moments passing through your mind as you remember and there are equally some extremely funny bits which I could totally relate to. Arriving in Yorkshire, English as a second language - those sentences which refer to the author’s experience of this made me smile with genuine understanding as I felt many of those things myself. The final beauty of this book for me was also finding yourself a life in a new country and its impact of the family you then create. So I think there are so many reasons why readers of different backgrounds would appreciate this memoir - a book I know will be my top read of this month and probably up there for top read of the whole year! It’s crept into my heart and there it will stay!

[Reader Views · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do you tell a coming-of-age story that’s also the story of a war-torn country and a philosophical rumination on identity, nationalism, and belonging in the postmodern world? Author Lena Atoug has taken a bold and very unique approach, composing a work that is part memoir, part prose poem, part philosophical introspection, and part political treatise in The Grieving Eye. Through the refracting lens of the first-person protagonist, Lena, we are treated to a series of poems, lyrical reflections, and commentary on both her war-ravaged nation and the adolescent girl who had to pay the price for being born in the wrong place when the pigeons of the 20th century’s most brutal ideological conflict come back to roost on her very own doorstep.

As you may have guessed, Lena was Yugoslavian, and her tale begins in her home country. She is the son of a dynamic and popular man, a handsome and charismatic political activist whom she idealizes:

My father is an adventurer and a social warrior – passionate about everything, his foot permanently glued to the gas pedal. He is bold and impulsive; he cannot bear hypocrisy, injustice or inaction… My father habitually throws himself to the defence of anyone he feels is being bullied, without a shred of care for his own safety…

Her father’s death from an aneurysm is the turning point in the book, and it devastates our young Lena. She ruminates on his passing and the effect it has on her, and there are long, beautiful, carefully wrought passages about the author’s childhood, nature, the parties at her home, and holiday celebrations. It’s a rich life that is ripped away from her when the war arrives, and the author conveys these experiences sometimes in verse and other times in a language that most closely resembles a prose poem. She is plainly aware of just where history has deposited her and her family:

My family are not like other families. We do not belong. We are the Nowhere People of the No Place, descendants of misfits, of travellers and refugees, shipwrecked and washed ashore by tides of history.

My favorite part of the book is definitely the writer’s command of lyricism and poetry, and it’s what sets this story apart from other memoirs about war or coming of age under difficult circumstances. Listening to her reminisce about summer is especially enchanting:

I spend hours lying on my belly in the grass, enveloped by the heat, by the scent of cypress and juniper, by the rising buzz of insect songs, my restraining arms around the Dog who is temperamentally more suited to hunting than field studies, as our fellow creatures reveal themselves one by one: the butterflies and the dragonflies, the turtles and the lizards.

By choosing to narrate in this fashion, Atoug gives us an almost non-linear narrative, pieced together from different fragments of her life. Recollections and events fold into one another, and in a kind of Proustian examination of memory, she comes to understand her journey. We will end up following Lena throughout her ordeal, and we’ll get to see her at least find a bit of solace when she finally makes it to England, which offers her both freedom and invisibility:

I thought that, without my previous purpose, without anything to justify or prove or accomplish, I might feel lost, but I find that I love it and the formless future stretches out in front of me like a glittering river.

What I also love about The Grieving Eye is that it will be a wake-up call for any American – and these days that means most Americans – who do not seem to either care or even want to know about what’s taking place out there in the real world. However, Atoug also focuses on her own nation, making crucial insights that can be equally applied to Americans as well as anyone from her homeland, which Tito held together by sheer force. When we read about a “diligent media and educators” who tell her whom to pity and whom to fear, you’ll have to stop for a moment and ask yourself which country she’s talking about.

Yes, there’s a lot of metaphor here, and that’s a great thing. Lena Atoug through The Grieving Eye gives us more to think about than where we can get a pair of cargo pants for $19.99, and maybe it will get a few people to open their eyes to the plight of others, who like Lena, end up in dire straits after the forces of international capital and political power have decided just how to carve up what used to be their home.

[Shelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

AD-PR product.
Oh this is a difficult one to put into words. A beautifully written memoir that was incredibly hard to read (despite the lyrical writing). The theme was very moving. The chapters and paragraphs take us through the main character’s life as she encounters the many changes that took place at ‘home’ in Yugoslavia in the late 80’s, early 90’s.

The book offers blow after blow, with lots of heartache. The memoir gives the reader a lot to think about. With chapters such as ‘the nowhere people’ it was hard not to become emotional, yet, somehow, the FMC’s voice was somewhat hardened.

I feel incredibly fortunate not to have been dealt this hand but acknowledge so so so many people have. Displacement; loss of homes and possessions (great and small); the pressure to blend in and conform on foreign soil… never truly being free again as you’re not home, always the outsider trying to prove your worth. Just wow. An important story that needs to be told, especially as ‘talk’ around immigrants and refugees continues to dominate political agendas in the UK.

Thank you so much for including me on the tour @deixispress, @novel.tours, @lena.atoug, this is certainly one that won’t leave me for a while. An example of another book where I wanted to know more about the history of what I had read, to find out more about what happened when Yugoslavia lost its name.

[Eric Best · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found Lena Atoug’s book an extraordinarily detailed and beautifully described journey of her experiences as a child in a war torn country, shattered by the loss of her beloved father very early and subsequently sent away to survive in another country, where her life as an immigrant learning a new language brings us intimately in to the struggles and loneliness that one might only know by doing. I now feel I appreciate some of the deepest inner realities of immigrants in ways I had never grasped before. This book changed me and I wish it could be read and absorbed by all those who blithely consider “those immigrants” to be intruders rather than the heroic survivors they are.

[Nicola Malloch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is stunning; a beautifully honest and deeply sorrowful look at life marked by loss and war. I have lost my own mum and understand the brutality of that feeling of emptiness that is left behind, I can't imagine then losing everything I know and being forced out of my homeland. This book is a powerful reflection on survival, self discovery and the rebuilding of ones self and the need of a home in what ever way that means

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exquisitely written memoir of loss, displacement, connection and love. A truly original and lyrical book. I highly recommend.

[Kcaroth1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Grieving Eye by Lena Atoug is a memoir focusing mainly on her childhood to very early adulthood. Two crucial events—the death of her father, and her migration brought on by her country’s war—are the drivers of her story.
I’ll start by saying that I am not really a huge biography/memoir reader, but the cover of the book really caught my eye. There is some beautiful writing, very lyrical and emotional sentences. Over the course of the book, you can really feel how much she misses her father, and her loneliness as she loses her country as well. While I liked individual chapters, I didn’t really connect that well with it overall, even with a parental loss during childhood myself. I think other than the writing itself, I just did not find the story particularly unique. Certainly, not every child loses a parent at a young age or has to go through war and going to a new country, but among those children and refugees, I would imagine that they would all feel much the same as this describes. This “everyman” approach, while providing a universal commonality that many might relate to, dulled my connection a bit. There was never a wow moment or something super interesting to really engage me. That could also be why I typically don’t read this genre.
Still, I think that many readers would enjoy this based on the themes of loss, memory, loneliness, and family combined with the strength of the writing.
Thank you to NetGalley and Deixis Press for the eARC.
3.5 stars

[A.M. Belsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Grieving Eye is Lena Atoug's first book, but I hope it won't be her last. This beautiful memoir tells the story of a young girl whose beautiful, ordinary life with her family is upended, first by death, then by warfare. She is thrust into an uncertain world and forced to build a new life, at a time that is already hard for girls who are becoming young women under the best of circumstances. I've read this book a number of times now, but its emotional effect on me has still not lessened. Sad, thoughtful, funny, relatable, unthinkable.

[Vivienne Egan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lena Atoug’s debut memoir is a poetic meditation on love and grief, creating a parallel with the loss of her father and the loss of her home city as war rages around and within it. A unique voice, her writing is lyrical and light, her point of view incisive, and her characters drawn with humour and heart. I loved this book and look forward to reading more of Atoug’s work.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's some gorgeous, lyrical writing here but this also feels like a book that is treading very familiar ground: childhood, the loss of a father to an aneurysm, the war in the former Yugoslavia that leads to exile and loss - it feels a bit heartless to say that this is almost 'the' story of twentieth century into our current time and this book isn't adding anything new.