Even though I am a professional book knower who likes to keep on top of what’s coming, every so often I want to pick up a book and just surprise myself.
The only thing I knew about “Lion” by Sonya Walger is that it is published by New York Review Books, known for specializing in original, highly literary works, and that the author is an actress, who played Penny in “Lost” and Molly Cobb in “For All Mankind.”
“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.
The novel opens with an apology from Walger to her mother, who suggests that it is a “betrayal” to write about the parent who left. But it is the absences that Walger intends to fill in.
I was, frankly, stunned by the energy, the force of life in this book. Some of that power comes from the choices Walger makes regarding structure and narration. The mostly short chapters are written in a continuous present where Walger grounds us in time and space before launching us into the episode. The observations are a mix of what Walger knows or has been told, infusing each moment with a spirit of discovery.
Some of the novel is clearly based in her memories, the images and events that have remained impressed in her mind. “I am five and six and seven. I spend most weekends with my grandmother. Her house is white with a driveway that crunches and there are enough rooms for the whole family.”
This episode crystallizes into a memory of a birthday party where she wonders if her father will show up. The description is thick with sense memories that bring the scene immediately to life. “My birthday is in June and always at my grandmother’s house. I wear underwear and my red rain boots because in the summer, grass snakes hide in my grandmother’s deep lawn. It is hot, sprinklers hiss, the pool hiccups, and my friend and I play Pass the Parcel in the long grass.”
Her father does not show up, a recurring theme in her life as he goes on to remarry and perpetually hop between continents, to make and blow fortunes, go to jail, drive race cars, jump out of airplanes.
The novel moves fluidly through time, from childhood to her present as a working actress and mother. The episodes form a tapestry that fills in both her and her father’s lives. But even as we’re hopscotching around, she is also moving us forward through her father’s life, building suspense around what we’ve been teased by both the cover of a skydiver head down falling to the earth, and some news the adult Walger receives over the phone, “he fell.”
After I finished the novel, I went back and reread sections, trying to figure out how she did it. A chapter on her parents meeting and marrying, events she is obviously not privy to, is as urgent as scenes grounded in her own life. There is no space between imagination and memory.
Throughout the novel, we are first told what will happen — “he fell” — and later we are shown what these actions have meant in the narrator’s life, something the narrator is still figuring out even as the book is written.
It is clear “Lion” is a novel only one person could write.
John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Exit Strategy” by Martha Wells
2. “Mr. Mercedes” by Stephen King
3. “James” by Percival Everett
4. “The Thirty Names of Night” by Zeyn Joukhadar
5. “Three Assassins” by Kōtarō Isaka
— Michelle K., Chicago area
Very interesting, eclectic list. I’m going to recommend a book that spans genres, “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” by Haruki Murakami.
1. “What Kind of Paradise” by Janelle Brown
2. “Finding Grace” by Loretta Rothschild
3. “The Lion Women of Tehran” by Marjan Kamali
4. “My Friends” by Fredrik Backman
5. “The Wedding People” by Alison Espach
— Mary Beth H., Tinley Park
This isn’t the best-known book by this author, but I think it’s a good fit for Mary Beth, “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia” by Mohsin Hamid.
1. “Plainsong” by Kent Haruf
2. “The Political Culture of the American Whigs” by Daniel Walker Howe
3. “A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir” by Jacinda Ardern
4. “The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins“ by Kirstin Downey
5. “Winter’s Bone” by Daniel Woodrell
— Bill B., Des Plaines
For Bill I’m recommending a funny and melancholy novel from Richard Russo, “Chances Are…”
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