“Actor Walger debuts with a piercing autobiographical novel about a woman’s relationship with her charismatic but neglectful father…. the dual themes of shame and overwhelming love are beautifully expressed, and the portrait of the father’s tragic arc is at once sweeping and precise… It’s a revelation.” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“No parent is perfect; that’s a condition of being a human. The accomplishment of Sonya Walger’s novel is in seeking to understand a charmingly imperfect dad—charismatic but chaotic, doting when he’s not distracted—rather than condemn him. Lion is a beautifully written and ultimately deeply moving book, a powerful debut.’ —Rumaan Alam
“Lion by Sonya Walger is everything a reader could want. It’s personal and vast at once: profound and fun, deft linguistically and psychologically. Best of all, there’s that sprinkling of magic you get only in the rarest novels.” —Darin Strauss
“Littered with disappointments and betrayals, Lion might well have made grim reading. Instead, we are given a seductive work of autobiographical fiction with stories that seem too good to be invented.”
—Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal
“Lion is an autobiographical novel exploring Walger’s relationship with her father, an Argentinian national, a classic rogue who swept Walger’s teenage English mother off her feet, resulting in the daughter who would grow up to write this stunning novel. The novel is an attempt to understand the man, his life, his death and the force of a daughter’s love despite betrayal and absences . . . I was, frankly, stunned by the energy, the force of life in this book.” —John Warner, Chicago Tribune
“Lion is a poignant story of heaven and earth; a godlike man unable to fully be a father, and his grounded daughter, who despite everything continues to look up at the sky with love.” —Tomoé Hill, Financial Times
“Walger’s story reminds us that loss braids elegantly with reverence, and it is a demonstration of how painfully irresistible it can be to construct your life around an enticing void.” —Jacob Brogan, Washington Post
“Told in short, powerful chapters that are always in the present tense, Walger shares evocative details about her dad, a charismatic rogue who, among his exploits, took up skydiving in his late 50s.” —Erik Pedersen, Pasadena Star-News
“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
“Restless, seductive—a tragic, semi-autobiographical love story lit up by its subject’s charisma and its author’s descriptive powers.” —The Week
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