In terms of mining his own biography, the standout is the mournful Candles, a subtle evocation of grief at the death of his mother in 2010.
And she is very good, too, on subtle shifts of grief in bereavement, on the secret lives of children, and on small bids for freedom.
For older children, Annabel Pitcher's My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece (Orion £6.99), new out in paperback, is an original, warm and subtle exploration of grief.
I remember tearing up the first time I read Nabokov's description, in "Speak, Memory," of his father being tossed on a blanket by cheering muzhiks, with its astonishingly subtle foreshadowing of grief and mourning.
When the history of Sept. 11 is written, it will show that New York reacted to its tragedy with a subtle blend of grief and defiance so balanced it might have been choreographed.
But this is never the whole truth with Ribera or La Tour, Orazio or indeed Artemisia Gentileschi (whose Susannah and the Elders carries such a subtle charge of grief, humiliation and shock), still less with Caravaggio himself.
Bradshaw also argues that there are "subtle differences between the grief felt for pets and that felt for close, human relatives": that, for example, many pet owners get a new pet within a few months, whereas grief lasts for many years when a close family member dies.
In "Horse Latitudes," Muldoon's most recent collection, there is plenty of serious feeling (particularly anger, nostalgia and grief) and a subtle historical awareness of civil conflict and military violence.
Lurie was working on Byron at the time of his disgrace, and the irony is not particularly subtle that he comes to grief from an escapade that Byron would have thought distinctly timid.
Dad gave her a couple of pokes, but then he just adjusted the flag so that it stood in the crook of her elbow and let her be". Treichel's treatment of grief is so subtle.
These measures are typically designed to assess pathology, and it could be argued that more subtle changes in quality of life, grief or more general well-being may also be important to consider.
