Lion

Reviews / Votes

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 * A beautifully written and ultimately deeply moving book, a powerful debut. * Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind * Restless, seductive - a tragic, semi-autobiographical love story lit up by its subject's charisma and its author's descriptive powers. * The Week * 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, author of Half a Life * 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. * Wall Street Journal * 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. * 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. * Washington Post * 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. * Chicago Review of Books *