Lion

A Novel

De: Sonya Walger

Narrado por: Sonya Walger

Lion is about 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, he is like a minor god who comes down to earth in a grand manner, falling in all the ways there are to fall.

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.

©2025 Sonya Walger (P)2025 Highbridge Audio

Gorgeous writing!

A memoir beautifully rendered via fiction. Not usually a fan of auto fiction; but, after reading, I understand how fictionalizing the experience allowed the author freedom to explore a story she was very much a part of and apart from. The writing!!

A wonderful novel about a life that few would dare to tell

Sonya wrote a fantastic book about certain truths of life that few would dare to tell about themselves.
At times heartbreaking and at times marvelous we learn about her father’s life and the space she and her siblings had within it.
No family is, in a conventional sense, “normal” but what Sonya gives us is a window into her life with an absent father that through perhaps selfishness led a life of what it felt like complete and utter freedom. And with that freedom comes consequences.. we get a glimpse of what those consequences meant for all those around him and even himself in the end.
As an Argentine and a nomad myself, I felt very connected with her story. And while my father’s absence was different than hers, her commentary on the feelings and deeper understanding of what she went through as a child, through her eyes as an adult with a family of her own now, ring very true.
I recommend this book to everyone. While she describes it as a novel, the autobiographical tones are definitely there. And as one of my favorite actresses, Sonya lets us in on her life story and what a rich story it is.

Outstanding novel

This is a gorgeous autobiographical novel with such yearning and heart and pain that it feels like something written in the mid twentieth century, the kind of book young women would read in college and never forget their entire lives. Simply beautiful.

The amazing details and care of her memories

The timeline for a little confusing but I understand why she needed it this way

Heartachingly beautiful

Raw and unflinchingly honest. Wonderful and brave. This book was recommended to me by friends. I don’t normally read non-fiction, but I’m glad I deviated for this book. The writing is beautiful by the author herself was perfection.