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Lion: A Novel
An engrossing work of autobiographical fiction about the relationship between an actress daughter and her larger-than-life father—the astonishingly assured debut novel of Sonya Walger, actress on Lost, For All Mankind, and more.
Lion, as his friends call him, is an unlikely parent, more legend than presence in his daughter’s life. He is a charismatic, dashing bon-vivant, a polo player, race car driver, cocaine addict, ex-con, pilot, and sky-diver. Born in the aftershocks of Argentina’s greatest earthquake, Lion is like a minor god who comes down to earth in a grand manner, falling in all the ways there are to fall.
“It is hard to compete with adrenalin when you are a child,” his daughter writes, now a mother herself to young children whose settled upbringing prompts her to consider her unconventional youth and the source of its chaos, her, by turns, loving, maddening, and magnetic father.
Lion is a double portrait told in a perpetual present tense that moves back and forth between present-day Los Angeles, where the narrator lives with her family and works as an actress, and the past of her peripatetic childhood, spent shuttling between her mother in England, boarding school, and her father and his successive wives in Buenos Aires and Lima.
Sonya Walger’s stunning autobiographical debut is an emotionally acute palimpsest of a novel about a father and daughter, in which the drama and incident, love and tragedy that make up his life make up hers as well. The legend of his life and her distinctive and imaginatively charged telling of it make for an engrossing and unforgettable family saga.
Lion, as his friends call him, is an unlikely parent, more legend than presence in his daughter’s life. He is a charismatic, dashing bon-vivant, a polo player, race car driver, cocaine addict, ex-con, pilot, and sky-diver. Born in the aftershocks of Argentina’s greatest earthquake, Lion is like a minor god who comes down to earth in a grand manner, falling in all the ways there are to fall.
“It is hard to compete with adrenalin when you are a child,” his daughter writes, now a mother herself to young children whose settled upbringing prompts her to consider her unconventional youth and the source of its chaos, her, by turns, loving, maddening, and magnetic father.
Lion is a double portrait told in a perpetual present tense that moves back and forth between present-day Los Angeles, where the narrator lives with her family and works as an actress, and the past of her peripatetic childhood, spent shuttling between her mother in England, boarding school, and her father and his successive wives in Buenos Aires and Lima.
Sonya Walger’s stunning autobiographical debut is an emotionally acute palimpsest of a novel about a father and daughter, in which the drama and incident, love and tragedy that make up his life make up hers as well. The legend of his life and her distinctive and imaginatively charged telling of it make for an engrossing and unforgettable family saga.
1 pages, Audio CD
First published February 4, 2025
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February 26, 2025
An exquisite and moving autobiographical novel … the story of a father and daughter relationship, fraught with an unreliable parent in her dad.
It contains snapshots of her life … moving from her times spent with her father and various stepmothers and stepsisters… to her adult life with her own husband and two children.. all stages of her life.
The author is an actress and writer.
The author of Loved and Missed wrote this about the book..
“A breathtaking novel, dreamlike and courageous, brimming with glamour and disastrous scarcities.” —Susie Boyt
It contains snapshots of her life … moving from her times spent with her father and various stepmothers and stepsisters… to her adult life with her own husband and two children.. all stages of her life.
The author is an actress and writer.
The author of Loved and Missed wrote this about the book..
“A breathtaking novel, dreamlike and courageous, brimming with glamour and disastrous scarcities.” —Susie Boyt
April 17, 2025
Quietly powerful book about a woman’s complicated relationship with her charismatic, inconsistent father. I appreciated how Sonya Walger writes about her father’s impact on her, both his bouts of care and his many moments of absence. Reading this book reinforced for me how parenting requires you to give up a part of yourself, or at least heavily dedicate a part of yourself, to your child (as someone who 99% wants to remain childfree, I don’t think parenthood is a sign of moral superiority – either way though, it is work.) Lion also validated for me how emotional neglect is a real thing and how it’s not weak or misguided to honor its impact on you.
Even though I’m not giving this book five stars, its strong, subtle prose won me over and its one of the higher-quality four-star books I’ve read as of late. Would recommend to those interested in complicated child-parent relationships.
Even though I’m not giving this book five stars, its strong, subtle prose won me over and its one of the higher-quality four-star books I’ve read as of late. Would recommend to those interested in complicated child-parent relationships.
July 21, 2025
“It is hard to compete with adrenaline when you are a child. Children are the opposite of adrenaline. They are routine, grinding, and inexorable repetition. Any parent knows this. Adrenaline is the tingling of freedom in the wrists, the immanence of chaos. I am a young child and already I know that my father loves me utterly and yet without precision, that he is vague on the details of my life because he disdains the quotidian, because the focus of his attention is always somewhere just beyond the horizon. My mother loves me steadily as the ocean.”
How do you account for the fact that this is Sonya Walger’s first book?
Was she writing sentences in the air with a magician’s wand all of her life, her previous life, her-life-before-the-book, practicing her craft with one eye half-closed in concentration?
Did James Salter’s spirit and flawless sentences descend upon her house and decide to take root in her garden, feeding her hunger for meaning with written pages that feel like photographs?
If you’re everywhere, you’re nowhere. And if you happen to be someone’s bigger-than-life dad, a golden man, a charismatic whirl of a person always ahead of their own life, your manic energy will always leave your child behind, hoping, waiting, wanting, clinging to a puff of dust.
In sentences that are both pared down to the bone and rooted in sensory details, Sonya Walger recounts her father’s whiplash of a life with the lucidity and emotionality of an adult speaking to her inner child.
In this improbable, miraculous literary object, she is right there in all the rooms, all the planes, all the cities, taking it all in, putting it down on paper.
And because she is everywhere, the feline force that is her father finally appears, caught between the lines of a daughter’s willful reimagining, untamed and heartbreaking.
How do you account for the fact that this is Sonya Walger’s first book?
Was she writing sentences in the air with a magician’s wand all of her life, her previous life, her-life-before-the-book, practicing her craft with one eye half-closed in concentration?
Did James Salter’s spirit and flawless sentences descend upon her house and decide to take root in her garden, feeding her hunger for meaning with written pages that feel like photographs?
If you’re everywhere, you’re nowhere. And if you happen to be someone’s bigger-than-life dad, a golden man, a charismatic whirl of a person always ahead of their own life, your manic energy will always leave your child behind, hoping, waiting, wanting, clinging to a puff of dust.
In sentences that are both pared down to the bone and rooted in sensory details, Sonya Walger recounts her father’s whiplash of a life with the lucidity and emotionality of an adult speaking to her inner child.
In this improbable, miraculous literary object, she is right there in all the rooms, all the planes, all the cities, taking it all in, putting it down on paper.
And because she is everywhere, the feline force that is her father finally appears, caught between the lines of a daughter’s willful reimagining, untamed and heartbreaking.
January 4, 2025
Actress Sonya Walger's stunning autobiographical novel charts the remote love of a gregarious but absent father. This father is always out of reach, physically and emotionally away. He is snorting cocaine in the bathroom. He is leaving without a goodbye. He is in prison. He is in the bed of a new woman. He is driving race cars and jumping out of airplanes. From a childhood spent shuttling between her British mother's calm and measured life in London and her Argentinian father's rootless existence, and into thriving adulthood, our protagonist's perspective of her father shifts. In many ways the novel becomes an anchor, an artifact, a life vest thrown through time across the river separating life and death, a last attempt to reconcile the father who was never enough with the man who was always too much. I loved it.
March 7, 2025
Blown. Away!!! I never want to say people should quit their day job but please write more books. Incredible.
June 12, 2025
My feelings about this book run amok aplenty. It was beautiful. It was poignant. It was idol/hero worship at its finest. Who among us, as a child, does not want to idolize a parent? Given the right circumstances, certainly, this can be accomplished. I for one, did not idolize either of my parents, but still I yearned for it. Still to this day I have that yearning for this thing I will never know in my lifetime. The adoring love and attention which a parent can imbue on a child.
Lion by Sonya Walger is autofiction at its finest. I struggled a bit throughout the book to try and comprehend what might be fact, and that which is fiction. I tried to tamper down my obsessive, overthinking brain; I told it to behave so I could enjoy this book. And enjoy it I did. I marveled at the feeling of inclusion that occurred as I listened (listened to the audiobook, read by the author, highly recommend) - as if I was reading the author’s secret diary full of her deepest thoughts and feelings about this god she worshiped. The god, obviously being her father - this man that was larger than life in every sense of the word - a con-man, a swindler, a cocaine addict, a world traveller, a skydiver, a race car driver, and a husband and father many times over. Everything and then some that can be imagined in a man that you want to call father. He adored her and loved her and did the best he could despite all of his faults and personality nuances. He was in essence, a man of myth.
You would think that given everything I just stated that this story would be an easy farce to see through, but it is in fact, quite believable. Her father was not all of these things at the same time, some aspects came and went, others weren’t acquired til later in life. I think what made this book successful was the intimacy of the author’s narration style. Allow me to quote from a review I saw on NYRB’s website,
“Walger is in complete command throughout, relying on playful narrational techniques such as first-person free indirect, Cohnian autonomous monologue, and immersive memory to render both those aspects of his life that overlapped with her own and those that did not.
—D.W. White, Chicago Review of Books”
Walger told this story so purely from the viewpoint of the adoring child, but yet showed also in simplistic ways, the things her father did while he was not with her, grounding us a bit. Pulling us down out of the clouds and back to reality. Consequences of such actions that this man has taken are real. And we are shown them.
The bulk of the story is the author’s experiences spent with her father - some parts were just things that occurred to her while he was not there, propelling us forward through her life. There were bits and pieces of her mother thrown in as well, but were scarce and spread out. As I was listening, I was thinking that there should be more of her mother involved in this story, but it is not a story about the mother, and her absence makes this book stronger. I think if she would have been more included in the narrative it would have distracted us from the strength of the relationship that was on display - father and child. It would have been unnecessary noise.
And as one last quirky rumination, I got into my head that this book was a movie; I could see it all on the big screen. In my visualizations, Pedro Pascal was the narrator’s father. Oh how this caused me joy! I found this highly comical and further perpetuated my love of what I was reading/listening to. If a movie adaptation is ever made, I vote for Pedro as the father.
I really enjoyed this book so thoroughly and it is ranking up there with one of my top of 2025 to date. Definitely highly recommend to anyone that enjoys complex characters and a good balance of character with loose plot. In the end, it is the telling of one’s life story seen through the eyes of a loved one. But what a fantastical life it is.
Updated with full review 6/11/25
Lion by Sonya Walger is autofiction at its finest. I struggled a bit throughout the book to try and comprehend what might be fact, and that which is fiction. I tried to tamper down my obsessive, overthinking brain; I told it to behave so I could enjoy this book. And enjoy it I did. I marveled at the feeling of inclusion that occurred as I listened (listened to the audiobook, read by the author, highly recommend) - as if I was reading the author’s secret diary full of her deepest thoughts and feelings about this god she worshiped. The god, obviously being her father - this man that was larger than life in every sense of the word - a con-man, a swindler, a cocaine addict, a world traveller, a skydiver, a race car driver, and a husband and father many times over. Everything and then some that can be imagined in a man that you want to call father. He adored her and loved her and did the best he could despite all of his faults and personality nuances. He was in essence, a man of myth.
You would think that given everything I just stated that this story would be an easy farce to see through, but it is in fact, quite believable. Her father was not all of these things at the same time, some aspects came and went, others weren’t acquired til later in life. I think what made this book successful was the intimacy of the author’s narration style. Allow me to quote from a review I saw on NYRB’s website,
“Walger is in complete command throughout, relying on playful narrational techniques such as first-person free indirect, Cohnian autonomous monologue, and immersive memory to render both those aspects of his life that overlapped with her own and those that did not.
—D.W. White, Chicago Review of Books”
Walger told this story so purely from the viewpoint of the adoring child, but yet showed also in simplistic ways, the things her father did while he was not with her, grounding us a bit. Pulling us down out of the clouds and back to reality. Consequences of such actions that this man has taken are real. And we are shown them.
The bulk of the story is the author’s experiences spent with her father - some parts were just things that occurred to her while he was not there, propelling us forward through her life. There were bits and pieces of her mother thrown in as well, but were scarce and spread out. As I was listening, I was thinking that there should be more of her mother involved in this story, but it is not a story about the mother, and her absence makes this book stronger. I think if she would have been more included in the narrative it would have distracted us from the strength of the relationship that was on display - father and child. It would have been unnecessary noise.
And as one last quirky rumination, I got into my head that this book was a movie; I could see it all on the big screen. In my visualizations, Pedro Pascal was the narrator’s father. Oh how this caused me joy! I found this highly comical and further perpetuated my love of what I was reading/listening to. If a movie adaptation is ever made, I vote for Pedro as the father.
I really enjoyed this book so thoroughly and it is ranking up there with one of my top of 2025 to date. Definitely highly recommend to anyone that enjoys complex characters and a good balance of character with loose plot. In the end, it is the telling of one’s life story seen through the eyes of a loved one. But what a fantastical life it is.
Updated with full review 6/11/25
October 10, 2025
And that makes 1000 books logged on this site. How my reading life has changed these past 13 years. I could get all sentimental and high-flown about it, but I suspect that if you're still around reading this, then you already know.
And so we read on.
And so we read on.
April 20, 2025
'i used to say that being loved by my father was like being loved by a lighthouse. it went dark for a very long time and then you were dazzled by the stroke of the glancing beam. but i have come to realize that i was the steady one, searching the dark water in order to find someone to save. he was the waterlogged craft, sometimes capsizing, sometimes afloat, that crept along the shoreline, hid in headlands, braved the depths, foundered on every rock. [...] my father was consistent only in his inconstancy. i was his lighthouse. and my mother was my rock.'
the first thing i said after finishing this book was "wow". everything about this just absolutely blew me away. i initially picked this book up because the author (who is also an actor) is in my favourite show of all time - so naturally i wanted to read her book. i didn't even know this book existed until a few days ago. but i am so glad that i decided to read this because this is a phenomenal piece of literature.
my favourite thing about this book has to be the writing - it is simply perfection. it was reminiscent of 'if an egyptian cannot speak english', in the way that it was blunt yet brimming with metaphors at the same time. this is the kind of writing i aspire to be capable of. i feel like it was perfect for the kind of story this is telling, since it reflects the juxtaposition of the narrator's feelings towards her father and his inconsistency in being a father to her. i hated him and sympathized with him at the same time, just like our narrator. he was a terrible father but he was trying but he wasn't trying hard enough but he's been through so much but that isn't an excuse but but but...
sonya walger's storytelling made it so easy to connect with her story (this is an autobiographical novel) and understand the scope of emotions she went through, and by the end i felt as if i'd lived through this experience with her. this book was so gripping and every time i read i simply could not stop. every chapter consumed me from beginning to end. i really don't know how to explain my emotions towards this book or describe just how good it was, but it's definitely one of my favourite books i've read this year. i really hope sonya walger continues down this career path as an author and writes more books, because i simply cannot get enough of her writing. this was absolutely delicious.
the first thing i said after finishing this book was "wow". everything about this just absolutely blew me away. i initially picked this book up because the author (who is also an actor) is in my favourite show of all time - so naturally i wanted to read her book. i didn't even know this book existed until a few days ago. but i am so glad that i decided to read this because this is a phenomenal piece of literature.
my favourite thing about this book has to be the writing - it is simply perfection. it was reminiscent of 'if an egyptian cannot speak english', in the way that it was blunt yet brimming with metaphors at the same time. this is the kind of writing i aspire to be capable of. i feel like it was perfect for the kind of story this is telling, since it reflects the juxtaposition of the narrator's feelings towards her father and his inconsistency in being a father to her. i hated him and sympathized with him at the same time, just like our narrator. he was a terrible father but he was trying but he wasn't trying hard enough but he's been through so much but that isn't an excuse but but but...
sonya walger's storytelling made it so easy to connect with her story (this is an autobiographical novel) and understand the scope of emotions she went through, and by the end i felt as if i'd lived through this experience with her. this book was so gripping and every time i read i simply could not stop. every chapter consumed me from beginning to end. i really don't know how to explain my emotions towards this book or describe just how good it was, but it's definitely one of my favourite books i've read this year. i really hope sonya walger continues down this career path as an author and writes more books, because i simply cannot get enough of her writing. this was absolutely delicious.
July 12, 2025
I chose to read this for two reasons. One, I heard the prose was something to behold. I even heard it compared to Salter. I agree it is wonderful. Stylistically I am not sure I agree with the Salter comp, but I understand how one might feel that way. I found Walter’s prose more sparse than Salter’s, but they are both talented prose stylists.
My second reason for picking this up was the father/daughter relationship. I have two young daughters and I felt it would be helpful to view this relationship from the eyes of the daughter. The Lion is a fascinating character study, but he leaves much to be desired as a father. Lots of mental notes made by myself while reading this.
Walger has a talent of searing scenes into the reader’s memory. The afternoon of sailing. The climb to Machu Picchu. Her father handing her a book as she boards an airplane for home and telling her not to look up until she lands. An endearing read. High four stars. Maybe five. Ratings are hopeless. I hope Walger continues to write. And act.
My second reason for picking this up was the father/daughter relationship. I have two young daughters and I felt it would be helpful to view this relationship from the eyes of the daughter. The Lion is a fascinating character study, but he leaves much to be desired as a father. Lots of mental notes made by myself while reading this.
Walger has a talent of searing scenes into the reader’s memory. The afternoon of sailing. The climb to Machu Picchu. Her father handing her a book as she boards an airplane for home and telling her not to look up until she lands. An endearing read. High four stars. Maybe five. Ratings are hopeless. I hope Walger continues to write. And act.
February 10, 2025
LION
@sonyawalgerofficial
Thank you @nyrbooks for the gifted copy.
Well. To date, this is my favorite 2025 publication.
Sonya Walger is a lot of things, yes, a multitalented gift to all, and hear me when I say that while I LOVE MOLLY COBB, y’all must know that Sonya Walger is a NOVELIST.
LION proves it over and over again.
A brief, autobiographical debut novel, LION hits every single note of a masterpiece. My favorite aspect is how the prose lives in the exact center of the venn diagram where lush/luxuriant meets uncomplicated/undemanding. It reads like a walk on a path in a well-kept garden.
LION explores the relationship of a daughter to her charismatic caricature of a father—an adrenaline junkie who cannot, will not be contained or constrained.
As LION bounces here and there in time, indicating the age of the narrator, something about the storytelling begins to create that unnameable magic really found only in a great novel. As we gather perspectives from the adult, the child, the teenager, the infant, all different selves of the same character, LION forms a dreamlike focus on memory, and how time across a lifespan does not have to be explained simply or chronologically. Often, it is different versions of our past selves who have the best insight into what is at hand. Walger also spoke to me here in an intangible, deeply personal way as she equilibrated the value in viewpoints of adults and children. So many times, a child’s perspective is treated as uninformed and unqualified, but here it’s elevated and respected. Beautiful.
LION meditates on time, how it’s never enough when you’re young, how it’s never enough as you age, and how, when we lose a loved one, it’s never after we have had enough of them. This element of yearning for MORE contrasts with a fully explored bit of irony—that physical distance is required to maintain some relationships. And, profoundly, only after the loss of someone as complex as a parent like this narrator’s father, can they begin to come into view, especially the with the kind of vision that allows for such a clear-eyed work of art as this novel to be possible.
I deeply love this book. I think you will, too.
@sonyawalgerofficial
Thank you @nyrbooks for the gifted copy.
Well. To date, this is my favorite 2025 publication.
Sonya Walger is a lot of things, yes, a multitalented gift to all, and hear me when I say that while I LOVE MOLLY COBB, y’all must know that Sonya Walger is a NOVELIST.
LION proves it over and over again.
A brief, autobiographical debut novel, LION hits every single note of a masterpiece. My favorite aspect is how the prose lives in the exact center of the venn diagram where lush/luxuriant meets uncomplicated/undemanding. It reads like a walk on a path in a well-kept garden.
LION explores the relationship of a daughter to her charismatic caricature of a father—an adrenaline junkie who cannot, will not be contained or constrained.
As LION bounces here and there in time, indicating the age of the narrator, something about the storytelling begins to create that unnameable magic really found only in a great novel. As we gather perspectives from the adult, the child, the teenager, the infant, all different selves of the same character, LION forms a dreamlike focus on memory, and how time across a lifespan does not have to be explained simply or chronologically. Often, it is different versions of our past selves who have the best insight into what is at hand. Walger also spoke to me here in an intangible, deeply personal way as she equilibrated the value in viewpoints of adults and children. So many times, a child’s perspective is treated as uninformed and unqualified, but here it’s elevated and respected. Beautiful.
LION meditates on time, how it’s never enough when you’re young, how it’s never enough as you age, and how, when we lose a loved one, it’s never after we have had enough of them. This element of yearning for MORE contrasts with a fully explored bit of irony—that physical distance is required to maintain some relationships. And, profoundly, only after the loss of someone as complex as a parent like this narrator’s father, can they begin to come into view, especially the with the kind of vision that allows for such a clear-eyed work of art as this novel to be possible.
I deeply love this book. I think you will, too.
May 20, 2025
Wow!
OK, my sense is that this is one of those starts niche but could easily catch fire kind of things, but what do I know? I've seen it featured on indie bookstore lists and on some of my favorite literary sites, ... but I concede I bought it somewhat on a whim, ... and I'm glad I did.
Powerful, compelling, evocative, disorienting (no, not just the fluctuating temporal and geographical aspects and perspectives, but, even with the author's voice, internally inconsistent, sure, but isn't that the whole point? ...the words vacillating and oscillating ... and conflicted ... keep rocketing around in my head, along with the far-too-vivid vision of a pendulum ... and a small and frenetic - not large and ponderous - one at that), crushing, maddening, heart-breaking ... and brilliant.
Do I actually have any idea what autobiographical fiction is? No, but I liked it. I'm not terribly well versed in mainstream TV, and I don't recall ever having seen Walger on the screen (although I sampled Lost many moons ago, and I've heard from many that I'd enjoy For All Mankind). And I have no idea what how the truth (or grain of truth)-to-embellishment ratio plays out here. But who cares? It's a really nicely done little book (whether you want to call it a short novel or a novella). And it wont surprise me if this ends up being one of 2025's more popular literary women's/mom's book/library club picks.
Setting the hook early: I wouldn't dream of floating a spoiler here, but ... for me ... and I've seen this is true for some others as well ... the author had my attention riveted, locked me in, had me fully vested, on edge, anxious, immensely curious, and, yes, wary ... by the end of the two-page initial Lioness chapter. Utterly sublime. I dare you to pick up the book - whether in the library or your favorite indie bookstore ... or, sure, as Amazon sample pages- and read those first two pages, and then put it down and walk away. Not likely.
Buy it and read it.
OK, my sense is that this is one of those starts niche but could easily catch fire kind of things, but what do I know? I've seen it featured on indie bookstore lists and on some of my favorite literary sites, ... but I concede I bought it somewhat on a whim, ... and I'm glad I did.
Powerful, compelling, evocative, disorienting (no, not just the fluctuating temporal and geographical aspects and perspectives, but, even with the author's voice, internally inconsistent, sure, but isn't that the whole point? ...the words vacillating and oscillating ... and conflicted ... keep rocketing around in my head, along with the far-too-vivid vision of a pendulum ... and a small and frenetic - not large and ponderous - one at that), crushing, maddening, heart-breaking ... and brilliant.
Do I actually have any idea what autobiographical fiction is? No, but I liked it. I'm not terribly well versed in mainstream TV, and I don't recall ever having seen Walger on the screen (although I sampled Lost many moons ago, and I've heard from many that I'd enjoy For All Mankind). And I have no idea what how the truth (or grain of truth)-to-embellishment ratio plays out here. But who cares? It's a really nicely done little book (whether you want to call it a short novel or a novella). And it wont surprise me if this ends up being one of 2025's more popular literary women's/mom's book/library club picks.
Setting the hook early: I wouldn't dream of floating a spoiler here, but ... for me ... and I've seen this is true for some others as well ... the author had my attention riveted, locked me in, had me fully vested, on edge, anxious, immensely curious, and, yes, wary ... by the end of the two-page initial Lioness chapter. Utterly sublime. I dare you to pick up the book - whether in the library or your favorite indie bookstore ... or, sure, as Amazon sample pages- and read those first two pages, and then put it down and walk away. Not likely.
Buy it and read it.
August 27, 2025
León es otra de esas novelas de apariencia sencilla y discreta, pero con un delicado mensaje en su contenido y significado. Después de su lectura y de haberla reposado unos días, creo que he entendido mucho más la intención de la autora Sonya Walger, actriz conocidísima por su papel en la serie Lost y ahora también escritora, abriéndose en canal y explicándonos con todo lujo de detalles su propia relación con su padre. Aunque también es una novela con cierto detalle de ficción, estoy seguro de ello.
Uno de los motivos por los que me resultaba interesante su lectura radicaba en esa relación paternofilial, ya que suelen ser temas interesantes en su jugo y en su contenido, y me parecen muy enriquecedores siempre. En este caso, Sonya nos habla de un padre adicto a la cocaína, siempre distante, nunca presente cuando lo ha necesitado, mujeriego y descuidado, dedicando su tiempo a conducir coches de carrera y a saltar al vacío desde un paracaídas. Walger nos va llevando de la mano por los primeros años de su vida y hasta su momento más actual, justo cuando se casa y tiene sus propios hijos, formando así su propia familia. Todas las etapas de su vida narradas con mimo y delicadeza, ofreciéndonos una figura paternal que se niega a renunciar a su vida anterior y a muchas de sus aficiones, olvidando entregar ese tiempo y dedicación necesaria que merecen y requieren los hijos. Su padre es un vividor sin escrúpulo alguno, se acuesta con mujeres de todo tipo, más mayores, más jóvenes, de aquí y de allá, madrastras, al fin y al cabo, y que acaban por darle hermanastros a la autora.
Por otro lado, cuando comento que hay detalles de ficción, me refiero a aspectos en los que a mi juicio el libro baja un poco de nivel, como que son menos reales. No quiero decir que sean malos, en absoluto, es simplemente que los veo menos profundos, menos precisos, instantes que tienen otro estatus dentro de una narración muy directa a modo general y que, en este sentido, se muestran como más forzados o indirectos. Es aquí donde me ha costado un poco más conectar con la trama.
En definitiva, León es un libro corto y poderoso que muestra el otro lado de la relación entre un padre y un hijo. Una relación compleja y anómala, de esas incomprensibles y que duelen. La autora lo acaba poniendo todo sobre la mesa de una forma absolutamente desgarradora y lo hace para regalarnos una primera novela de una calidad excepcional, tanto que cuesta creer que antes dedicara su tiempo a otra cosa… ¿de verdad? Cruda, por momentos, cruel, emocional y delicada. Vuelve pronto, Sonya.
Uno de los motivos por los que me resultaba interesante su lectura radicaba en esa relación paternofilial, ya que suelen ser temas interesantes en su jugo y en su contenido, y me parecen muy enriquecedores siempre. En este caso, Sonya nos habla de un padre adicto a la cocaína, siempre distante, nunca presente cuando lo ha necesitado, mujeriego y descuidado, dedicando su tiempo a conducir coches de carrera y a saltar al vacío desde un paracaídas. Walger nos va llevando de la mano por los primeros años de su vida y hasta su momento más actual, justo cuando se casa y tiene sus propios hijos, formando así su propia familia. Todas las etapas de su vida narradas con mimo y delicadeza, ofreciéndonos una figura paternal que se niega a renunciar a su vida anterior y a muchas de sus aficiones, olvidando entregar ese tiempo y dedicación necesaria que merecen y requieren los hijos. Su padre es un vividor sin escrúpulo alguno, se acuesta con mujeres de todo tipo, más mayores, más jóvenes, de aquí y de allá, madrastras, al fin y al cabo, y que acaban por darle hermanastros a la autora.
Por otro lado, cuando comento que hay detalles de ficción, me refiero a aspectos en los que a mi juicio el libro baja un poco de nivel, como que son menos reales. No quiero decir que sean malos, en absoluto, es simplemente que los veo menos profundos, menos precisos, instantes que tienen otro estatus dentro de una narración muy directa a modo general y que, en este sentido, se muestran como más forzados o indirectos. Es aquí donde me ha costado un poco más conectar con la trama.
En definitiva, León es un libro corto y poderoso que muestra el otro lado de la relación entre un padre y un hijo. Una relación compleja y anómala, de esas incomprensibles y que duelen. La autora lo acaba poniendo todo sobre la mesa de una forma absolutamente desgarradora y lo hace para regalarnos una primera novela de una calidad excepcional, tanto que cuesta creer que antes dedicara su tiempo a otra cosa… ¿de verdad? Cruda, por momentos, cruel, emocional y delicada. Vuelve pronto, Sonya.
June 23, 2025
So so so so beautiful. Master piece.
‘I want to hold myself together because I know how easily we are scattered and lost.’
‘I want to hold myself together because I know how easily we are scattered and lost.’
July 17, 2025
I want to eat this book
March 1, 2025
I’ll give 5 stars to any book that makes an old man on a plane keep his light on for me (I think he could tell I was having a sentimental moment with the book and that certain lighting is important. He also made sure we got juice.) and causes me to have an epiphany. The short quick descriptions felt so incredibly satisfying, impactful, and piercing. I am in awe at the style. I loved all the age jumps. It felt like such a clever way to compare the ways her relationship shifted in every stage of her life. It is so incredible to read something, feel understood, and learn more about yourself. Healing and navigating difficult relationships is never linear so why write the events in order. Brilliant!
March 4, 2025
Feel weird about this one. Some of it really kept me going like with the father’s third wife and like the conspiracy theorist and all that but a lot of the writing is just plain immature. As in it feels like I’ve read this kind of thing a million times in fiction writing classes in college. Still compelling at times though. Just not nearly as profound as it thinks it is. Decent debut. Three stars.
July 7, 2025
My father lives in London and works in the futures market. He gambles other people's money in a future where no one lives yet. Life is pristine out there in the unimpeachable future. He makes a fortune. He owns race cars and polo ponies….He thrives in this unknown land that is anywhere but now. For his entire life he refuses every job that pays a salary. He works always on commission, stakes his world on a future that he is sure he can predict and control. He fervently believes in a world he alone can see.
My father lives like the skydiver he will become. He spends his life leaping into the unknown, defying the laws that govern everyone else, and waiting for the consequences to catch up with him later.
My father lives like the skydiver he will become. He spends his life leaping into the unknown, defying the laws that govern everyone else, and waiting for the consequences to catch up with him later.
March 15, 2025
Enthralling and emotional. Reading this book encouraged me to self reflect on my relationship with my father and I am so grateful.
February 4, 2025
“He fell in all the ways there are to fall: short, out, apart, in love, from grace, afoul of the law, by the wayside, off the map.”
A devastatingly beautiful memoir of and tribute to the author’s father - a peripatetic adventurer who went in and out of her life but left lasting impressions. These are her collected reminiscences and observations, fleshed out with details from others in his life. It is also a self-examination of her life with and without him, and the ways in which she protected herself from his absences.
“I know how to to keep safe, how to tuck in, how to keep chaos at bay. I am still learning how to bathe in the soft hue of a blood moon.”
Lion is narrated by the author, an actor and talented writer. It moves from when her parents first met to his death, but this linear through-line is regularly interspersed with other vignettes in the way we often remember things, where one thought unlocks another, regardless of time and place.
My thanks to the author, publisher, @HighgateAudio, and #NetGalley for early access to the audiobook of #Lion for review purposes. Publication date: 4 Feb 25.
A devastatingly beautiful memoir of and tribute to the author’s father - a peripatetic adventurer who went in and out of her life but left lasting impressions. These are her collected reminiscences and observations, fleshed out with details from others in his life. It is also a self-examination of her life with and without him, and the ways in which she protected herself from his absences.
“I know how to to keep safe, how to tuck in, how to keep chaos at bay. I am still learning how to bathe in the soft hue of a blood moon.”
Lion is narrated by the author, an actor and talented writer. It moves from when her parents first met to his death, but this linear through-line is regularly interspersed with other vignettes in the way we often remember things, where one thought unlocks another, regardless of time and place.
My thanks to the author, publisher, @HighgateAudio, and #NetGalley for early access to the audiobook of #Lion for review purposes. Publication date: 4 Feb 25.
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February 4, 2025Gifted by publisher
A gorgeous novel on how we lie to ourselves and to others; out of shame, out of guilt, out of protection, out of love.
The father can't be pinned down, the daughter is always grounded. The narrative mirrors this relationship, traveling through time and space, back and forth, never steady. The present tense feels like real time reflections, the daughter in the novel filling things in as they come. The writing keeps you at a distance like the father does. It's almost like we're watching these memories, this film, be formed and shaped in real time. Does writing down a memory ever truly capture the truth of the moment, of the person?
Walger has an amazing eye for observation and focuses it on herself as well - or I should say the Sonya in the book. Just as she tries to capture her father on the page, she shows the effect he has on her parenting. She wants to stay. She wants to create order. She wants to be more like her mother. But maybe, just maybe, there's a bit of room for both?
I will read anything Walger writes next.
A gorgeous novel on how we lie to ourselves and to others; out of shame, out of guilt, out of protection, out of love.
The father can't be pinned down, the daughter is always grounded. The narrative mirrors this relationship, traveling through time and space, back and forth, never steady. The present tense feels like real time reflections, the daughter in the novel filling things in as they come. The writing keeps you at a distance like the father does. It's almost like we're watching these memories, this film, be formed and shaped in real time. Does writing down a memory ever truly capture the truth of the moment, of the person?
Walger has an amazing eye for observation and focuses it on herself as well - or I should say the Sonya in the book. Just as she tries to capture her father on the page, she shows the effect he has on her parenting. She wants to stay. She wants to create order. She wants to be more like her mother. But maybe, just maybe, there's a bit of room for both?
I will read anything Walger writes next.
February 21, 2025
Exquisite writing. If you have/had a larger than life parent or a perfectly imperfect relationship with one then this is for you, even if you don’t read for the tender and beautiful prose brimming with love.
February 25, 2025
the fact that this is autofiction and even remotely a true story blows my mind! beautiful, frustrating, scandalous, heartbreaking….this book has everything.
March 8, 2025
halfway through I was already buying copies to send to friends
August 2, 2025
I’ve been reading less lately (not by choice, but by life’s sly little thefts). Lion was a bookseller’s recommendation. I can’t quite remember why she thought it would be right for me… but I’ll never say no to an NYRB edition. All that to say: some stories slip in quietly, and before you know it, you’re inside them, wearing someone else’s memories like they’re your own. In her pages, I found the kind of solidarity that only exists between women who’ve been shaped by their fathers, by crossing oceans, by motherhood. Thank you.
March 21, 2025
I was graciously sent an ARC of LION by Penguin Random House International, knowing nothing about it except for the raving letter of recommendation that came with it. I can’t even remember the last time I went into a book with no expectations, and ended up having my mind blown.
LION is described as being an “autobiographical novel”. This piece of autofiction explores Walger’s relationship with her father, a mesmerizing, charismatic sky-diver of a man who fathered at least three children between three women.
One person should not be allowed to have all this talent. A successful actress and a writer with an innate mastery of sparse, evocative, and gut-wrenching prose? Walger’s sentences are short, dynamic. She evokes with ten words what others struggle to do with a hundred. Spanning three continents, a half dozen countries, and several decades, LION plays with chronology to connect textures, details, and events across time to evoke what it must be like to have such a man as her father, a father who is far more interested in satisfying his need for adrenaline, attention, and novelty than he is in building reliable relationships with his family.
This is not my usual kind of read, and in many ways, every time I put it down to take a break, I was tempted not to return to it. There is a weightiness to Walger’s prose, and the emotions it triggered in me, that made me almost afraid to lose myself to her words.
LION is described as being an “autobiographical novel”. This piece of autofiction explores Walger’s relationship with her father, a mesmerizing, charismatic sky-diver of a man who fathered at least three children between three women.
One person should not be allowed to have all this talent. A successful actress and a writer with an innate mastery of sparse, evocative, and gut-wrenching prose? Walger’s sentences are short, dynamic. She evokes with ten words what others struggle to do with a hundred. Spanning three continents, a half dozen countries, and several decades, LION plays with chronology to connect textures, details, and events across time to evoke what it must be like to have such a man as her father, a father who is far more interested in satisfying his need for adrenaline, attention, and novelty than he is in building reliable relationships with his family.
This is not my usual kind of read, and in many ways, every time I put it down to take a break, I was tempted not to return to it. There is a weightiness to Walger’s prose, and the emotions it triggered in me, that made me almost afraid to lose myself to her words.
February 18, 2025
Author Walger, a successful actress, British-born, with an Argentinian father, has written a memoir as a novel and she sets out the purpose right up front: It is a book about love.
It is also an extraordinary book, fresh and surprising in its use of language, compelling in its plotting, inventive in its structure, unexpected in its culmination. She keeps tight control throughout and never wastes a word.
Walger models the daughter, clearly, on herself, and her father is the glamourous, passionate, constantly unreliable "Lion" of the title.
I commend her for capturing the way a child processes information, how a child loves, and then how those two things evolve as a person grows older.
It's striking how universal this story is, although grounded in countless specifics.
Brilliant, memorable, admirably concise--a winner.
It is also an extraordinary book, fresh and surprising in its use of language, compelling in its plotting, inventive in its structure, unexpected in its culmination. She keeps tight control throughout and never wastes a word.
Walger models the daughter, clearly, on herself, and her father is the glamourous, passionate, constantly unreliable "Lion" of the title.
I commend her for capturing the way a child processes information, how a child loves, and then how those two things evolve as a person grows older.
It's striking how universal this story is, although grounded in countless specifics.
Brilliant, memorable, admirably concise--a winner.
May 8, 2025
things i'm tired of in contemporary women's lit: autobiographical novels about emotionally and physically absent fathers with an unnamed narrator and shifting timeline. unfortunately this book is in the venn diagram of everything that annoys me at the moment.
May 12, 2025
I don’t get why this book isn’t talked about more. I can see how it might be mundane for some but I couldn’t put it down. She tells her story in such an authentic and sporadic manner. Like when you see something random and suddenly get hit with nostalgia and childhood memories you didn’t even realize you remembered, and I loved it. Glass castle-esque, highly reccomend if you liked Jeanette Walls’ memoir. I’ve never connected so much with a book.
March 19, 2025
My thought is this must’ve been cathartic to write. I hope so. It is a very interior story, but one that feels familiar to someone having experienced the “schizophrenia”, as she describes it, of being an only child product of a circus of a divorce. Many a richly crafted one liner.
She also, and this is the part that makes my heart ache and my eyes stings, understands devotion and love to a father that is hinged on living fantasy, leaving his daughter behind in reality. And yet the daughter reaches for him still, tries to make the ground interesting. But she will never be as expansive as his imagination.
She also, and this is the part that makes my heart ache and my eyes stings, understands devotion and love to a father that is hinged on living fantasy, leaving his daughter behind in reality. And yet the daughter reaches for him still, tries to make the ground interesting. But she will never be as expansive as his imagination.
March 31, 2025
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
A full, larger than life story told in 172 pages due to Walger’s deft economy of words. She writes with such acceptance of who her father was, acknowledging in subtle ways how he shaped her but never villainizing him. Sharing his full imperfectness with love, giving hope to those of us handed our parents pain and trying desperately to form it into love.
Down to the last line, it was perfect. I held it to myself, knowing that if I could pick any superpower it would be to tell a story like this.
A full, larger than life story told in 172 pages due to Walger’s deft economy of words. She writes with such acceptance of who her father was, acknowledging in subtle ways how he shaped her but never villainizing him. Sharing his full imperfectness with love, giving hope to those of us handed our parents pain and trying desperately to form it into love.
Down to the last line, it was perfect. I held it to myself, knowing that if I could pick any superpower it would be to tell a story like this.
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