King Lear Is a Media Mogul in <i>Dunbar</i>
In the opening chapter of Edward St. Aubyn’s Dunbar, King Lear has been reimagined as a once-formidable Canadian media mogul, Henry Dunbar. Having been deposed from his position of power and exiled to a care home named Meadowmeade in rural England, Dunbar’s now being forcibly medicated and patronized by a fleet of grimly infantilizing nurses. “They stole my empire, and now they send me stinking lilies,” Dunbar growls, appalled as much by his own enfeebled state as by the apparent treachery of his two eldest daughters.
is the latest installment in the , a collection of modern prose retellings of Shakespeare’s plays that includes Margaret Atwood’s take on , , and Howard Jacobson’s interpretation of, titled . (Forthcoming books include Jo Nesbo on and Gillian Flynn on .) It’s an intriguing matchmaking exercise, but the pairing of St. Aubyn with Lear seems predestined—who better to reckon with a play about frustrated power and familial resentment than the author of the Patrick Melrose novels, a five-book exorcism of ancestral demons?
