A Lear for Our Time

Dunbar 

by Edward St. Aubyn

“Why was he in this state? Or perhaps the question was why had he not always been in this state? Why had he not always found life so disturbing and so poignant?”   ― Edward St. Aubyn, Dunbar






Having read Edward St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels I was not surprised that he would be able to present a thoroughly readable and enjoyable Lear for the twenty-first century. Henry Dunbar, the titular character, is a media mogul in decline. Like Lear he has divided his empire among his daughters and in doing so finds himself at the mercy of the two eldest of the trio . Not unlike many corporate men, his identity was his empire and his soul was at sea without it. As chapter three begins we find him questioning, "Who am I?" Imprisoned in Meadowmeade, a sanatorium in rural England, he finds himself almost beyond the possibility of life itself. But his intelligence takes over and he begins to makes plans to return to the world and just perhaps find his identity.

The plot provides suspense as the two eldest daughters, Abbey and Megan, plan to complete the divestiture of his estate and ensure that he never returns. Dunbar has only an alcoholic comedian by his side as he drifts through the wilds of the rural British countryside. Will he survive the ordeal? Will he escape the clutches of his elder daughters? And will the youngest daughter, Florence, who has never given up on him, be able to assist in his return and reconnect with her father?

The book's best passages come when St. Aubyn is alone with his central character. When he engages the brutal reality of nature with only his own purposefulness to guide him the story takes on a mesmerizing character. "He was locking into his walking stride, preserving his energy, refusing to disperse himself in speculative chatter, absorbed by a single objective: to get to London and somehow take back control of the Trust." He sounds like the man who had built an empire, not given it away. He engages with nature; "The leafless trees, with their black branches stretching out hysterically in every direction, looked to him like illustrations of a central nervous system racked by disease: studies of human suffering anatomised against the winter sky." I found my reading rapt with the tension of Dunbar's mind and his engagement with the world. The secondary characters were not as well drawn, although even when bordering on caricature they provided enough believable evil to suggest that they might prevail.

"Dunbar" is part of a series of contemporary novels based on Shakespeare's plays and published by Hogarth Press. His five Melrose novels, which dissect with savage and beautiful precision the agonies of family life, made him a perfect candidate to update King Lear, Shakespeare’s most devastating family story. In doing so he has translated much of the power of Shakespeare's great play into an agonizingly tense and metaphorically astute novel for and of our times – an examination of power, money and the value of forgiveness. Edward St. Aubyn has been able to create a work that is worthy of his reputation and also respectful to the source of this Shakespearean tragedy for our times.


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