Dunbar

August 21, 2017
In St. Aubyn’s retelling of King Lear, Canadian media mogul Henry Dunbar finds himself drugged and imprisoned in a sanatorium somewhere in deepest, darkest Cumbria by his two pernicious elder daughters and their sycophantic celebrity doctor. The monstrous girls intend a hostile takeover of their father’s empire. (Their younger sister, Florence, has denounced this empire, and Dunbar has, in turn, disinherited her.) After duping his nurses into thinking he’s swallowed his meds, Dunbar regains his wits just enough to escape from the sanatorium with the help of a fellow inmate, an entertaining, drunken fool named Peter. But Peter is caught, and there ensues a race among sisters, friends, and enemies to find Dunbar as the old man stumbles away through the countryside in a storm. St. Aubyn (the Patrick Melrose novels) eliminates or cleverly amalgamates characters from Shakespeare’s original, glossing over the messy political intrigue of the play’s middle parts. He concentrates on Dunbar’s suffering and inner conflict as he confronts his own demise and realizes his mistake in rejecting the love of the principled Florence. The end of this contemporary version is abrupt and unsatisfying, but the tale is the perfect vehicle for what this author does best, which is to expose repellent, privileged people and their hollow dynasties in stellar prose.