17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
An actress produces a stirring novel about her unreliable father
Every idol delineates an absence. We make statues to the gods because they are not here — and to memorialize the moments when we were sure they were. In this sense, 'Lion,' the first novel by the actress Sonya Walger, is less an undisguised work of autobiographical fiction than a sort of shrine. The deity at its center is Walger's father — a criminal, addict and adrenaline junky, always irresponsible to a fault — and he is never really there, even as he, like an effigy shrouded in incense, whispers that he always has been. 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.
