Book Review: Oscar’s Lion by Adam Baron

By Simon Demetriou

There are events in everyone’s lives that leave them feeling irrevocably altered afterwards. In passing through these times, we inevitably leave something behind at the same time as we acquire new parts of ourselves and our lives. Oscar’s turning point happens to be a weekend spent with a talking, shape-shifting lion. If that sounds silly to you, well, it shouldn’t. Because Adam Baron’s latest book manages to movingly explore the grief of both literal and figurative loss, ask questions that will make every parent reading the book consider some of their own shortcomings, all while being a lovely piece of writing and a great deal of fun.

Like the protagonists of most children’s stories, Oscar is amazingly resilient and adaptable. When he wakes up one Friday morning to find that his parents have vanished, ostensibly replaced by a ‘very big and very real male lion’ with an apologetic look in his eye, sure he’s shocked, but upon a little reflection he comes to the conclusion that if ‘there was no other explanation for the absence of his parents, then it was just one of those things’. Of course, this is part of the necessary economy of a story for children, but it’s also part of what makes the novel so striking. We all like to think of ourselves as indispensable, but how much of that is merely wishful?

Of course, acceptance for Oscar is aided by the fact that the lion has some distinct advantages over his parents: he’s a better reader; he can strike terror into the hearts of Oscar’s enemies; he never forces Oscar to eat vegetables; he loves building dens; he takes Oscar on museum excursions that turn into wildly illuminating adventures; and, most close to the bone for this reader, the lion is never ‘distracted by a text. Or a phone call. Or any ‘really important emails’.’ Hmm.

One rather heavy cloud does hang over this new relationship. The lion informs Oscar on the Friday that he will not need to eat for at least two days. Sunday eventually comes, and with it a moment that could turn impossibly dark (and I won’t say that there wasn’t a part of me that kind of hoped it would), but which actually, and miraculously, serves to deepen the reader’s sense of wonder and of self-reflection. This is a tremendously well-crafted book, and the message of moving on and moving past that ends Oscar’s Lion is one that is sure to resonate with readers of any age at all.