Lion Audiobook By Sonya Walger cover art

Lion

A Novel

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Lion

By: Sonya Walger
Narrated by: Sonya Walger
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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 Family Life Genre Fiction World Literature
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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!!

Gorgeous writing!

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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.

Heartachingly beautiful

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Such a beautifully crafted history: tragic, comedic and romantic. Exquisite observation. Every father, and mother, leave their own indelible hallmarks, and despite the extremes of Sonya’s father (and mother) there are so many breathtaking observations about these relationships that transcend any one life. Loved every minute.

Outstanding prose

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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.

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

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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.

Outstanding novel

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Descriptive prose that moves fast but makes me linger. A perfect book club consideration. My pocket of escape from reality that helps tremendously. This woman is exquisite in every way - her writing, her speaking, her mothering. I feel like I know her just by reading these well composed chapters. She had me at first chapter. I can’t wait for friends to read it so we can talk about it.

A perfect book club consideration

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Sonia Walger is a terrific actress, fun to watch, complex, and completely accessible/appealing. I read a review of this book and wanted to see what her cross-over project might offer. I enjoy her even more as an author. There is no other human who could have narrated this audiobook - so glad she took that on (guessing she felt she had no choice).

One senses that Ms. Walger’s urgency to unpack her complicated relationship with her Dad made this book inevitable. Thankfully she’s got the writing chops and a captivating voice to share it all. She affords us insight, if we have the guts to actively experience her book, into all parental bonds. The ease and fluidity of the prose here, as she bounces through a lifetime of memories with her father, is nothing short of enthralling. The reader falls in love with her Dad despite many profound shortfalls in his parenting and his judgment.

As a proud Dad who knows he did many things right but suffers the inescapable guilt of each mistake made, I loved this book.

Wonderful Memorial to an Imperfect but Nonetheless Loving Dad

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