I first read The Problem of Pain back in 2024. Here is my review from the initial reading:

I like C.S. Lewis, but I didn’t much like this book. Not because it was poorly written or poorly thought out, but because I don’t think the basic facts of existence require intricate, arcane theological explanations that rely on thousands of years of convoluted religious and philosophical texts.

C.S. Lewis’ allegory opens with the narrator, presumably a middle-aged Englishman, walking through the rainy streets of a city at dusk. He happens upon a line of bickering people waiting for a bus and, almost by accident, he’s in the queue, and then aboard the bus, not knowing where it’s bound.