Dunbar: William Shakespeare's King Lear Retold: A Novel (Hogarth Shakespeare)

A great writer takes on an interesting task and perform the job with superb outcome. He brings the power of his craft to this project Which is both different from the Patrick Melrose novels but not without parallels.

If someone held a gun to my head and forced me to choose one favorite Shakespeare play, it would be King Lear. I saw my first production when I was seventeen, and I have never ceased to be awed by the raw power of its imagery, the range of emotions, and the perfection of Shakespeare's language. It is an ancient, pre-Christian world where the laws of nature rule, and the consequences are dire when the natural order is disturbed. St. Aubyn captures much of this in a fairly short work (260 pages). Dunbar/Lear is portrayed in all his arrogant petulance and rage, driven by his need for power, and his ultimate redemption by the insight gained through his suffering. Our beloved loyal Kent/Wilson and Fool/Peter are here as are most of the characters we know so well. The storm scene is lengthy and very well done. What is most interesting to me is St Aubyn's treatment of the daughters. In the play, they are pretty much black and white-Goneril/Abigail and Regan/Megan are conniving, greedy, power hungry, and faithless; Cordelia is innocent, loving and loyal. St. Aubyn fleshes out their characters with backstories and is especially effective with Florence/Cordelia; she is intelligent, insightful, and resourceful in foiling her sisters' plots. I enjoyed this very much, and I hope it may encourage readers unfamiliar with the Shakespeare play to read it or, better yet, to see a production live or on film. I would also recommend it to friends, especially young people who think Shakespeare is too difficult or unapproachable.

Part of the magic of the tale of King Lear is that it was written those many centuries ago, so that our imaginations are free to roam. In this version, Dunbar too closely resembles a number of contemporary individuals for me to not keep on thinking that they were being portrayed here. What goes wrong in this version are the settings; the slipping in and out of the real then all of a sudden placing fictitious alongside them. This is particularly noticeable when the action takes place in the English Lake District, when Dunbar, goes AWOL from his care home. His ordeals, those of an 80 yr old, are exaggerated and become incredible to the point that I began to loose interest. There is humour but it's pretty black. But then I suppose so too is Lear.

The book was advertised as new and it came unused. As to the quality off the book itself, it is King Lear in a modern setting, complete with horrific behavior by the "King's" family. A good story told well.

This is the sixth book in the Hogarth Shakespeare series that I have read. It is a retelling of [book:King Lear|12938]. It is many years since I read King Lear and it never was one of my favourites out of Shakespeare's plays. However Edward St Aubyn does a good job of making it into a very readable book. Really he takes the bare bones of the original and builds his own story but there are enough similarities in the action and in the characters to see where his ideas came from. One unexpected delight was the humour. Dunbar's fellow inmate, Peter, is very funny as is their rackety escape from the institution they find themselves in. It is also quite a short book which seemed to finish almost as soon as it had begun. However having just finished a row of lengthy tomes, one of which bored my socks off, I was very happy with something short, sharp and snappy. If you enjoy this kind of retelling of classics then try this series. It is excellent.

Review King Lear before you read Dunbar. St. Aubyn writes in a breathless prose. I love this novel and look forward to other Hogarth Shakespeare novels.

I have admired Edward St. Aubyn's series of novels focusing on the life of the execrable Patrick Melrose. St. Aubyn's style is sharp, focused, biting, and often hilarious. His insights and characerizations are brilliant. I was excited to see that he had taken on one of the greatest Shakespeare plays--King Lear--as the basis for his contribution to the Hogarth Press series of novels based on the plays. I have read three of them before this--with some disappointment, but also some admiration for the courage and the ingenuity of the writers--especially Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson--in their efforts to write contemporary novels using the plots and characters of Shakespeare's plays as the templates for their own work. It still seems to me that St. Aubyn could (and should) have written a brilliant adaptation of King Lear in his novel set in the contemporary world. His choice of turning Lear into a Rupert Murdoch-like media tycoon and multi-billionaire is a reasonable one, and his plot involving maneuverings among his daughters and their super-rich cronies--Wall Street financiers working high-level hostile takeovers and corporate mergers--has some promise. Unfortunately, the kindest thing I can say about this novel is that it is competent--it moves quickly, as St. Aubyn's novels usually do, and it has a veneer of plausibility suggesting some familiarity with the behavior and challenges of the denizens of places like Davos, owners of vast real estate holdings and other properties, and wielders of finance regulations and tax laws in the service of their own (or their shareholders') enrichment. The daughters corresponding to the characters of Goneril and Regan (and their male dependents and flunkies) are evil and perverse enough to generate shivers of contempt and fear mixed with amusement. But the novel, while an engaging read, has nothing to elevate it even to the level of his best Melrose books, and certainly nothing to suggest a "heritage" based on the power and glory of Shakespeare's play. This may be said to be an inevitable failure. Lear has defeated many a team of performers and directors, many an operatic composer and librettist (even Verdi) and for that matter, many critics. A good production of the play can be a towering experience, even as one acknowledges weaknesses that seem to be endemic; a great production is a life-defining experience. Sadly, St. Aubyn has provided a fair-to-middling entertainment, good of its kind, but it needs to be sheltered from the effects of comparison to its ancestry and origins.

resolves all the 'problem' areas in the original play without sacrificing the story!

Shakespeare is lost on me as a rule, despite being introduced to it at school in the 1960's, however this re-writing of the play as a novel had me gripped. It moved at a good pace, the characters were believable to the same extent that any dramatic character is believable. Moving in parts, funny in parts, a great read, I may even have another go at reading the original. Perhaps some of the criticism comes from people who are very familiar with the play and have read it and seen it performed numerous times?

Es gibt sie noch, die Könige und Königinnen, aber ihre Thronfolgegeschichten lesen iwr heute eher in Magazinen im Wartezimmer oder beim Friseur als in den "ernsthaften" Nachrichten oder als Teil eines "ernstzunehmenden" Romans oder Theaterstücks (mit einigen Ausnahmen zum britischen Könighaus natürlich). Die Machtfülle - und die dynastische Struktur - einer früheren Kaiser- oder Königsfamilie finden isch heute eher in den Bereichen der Hochfinanz und der Medienkonzerne und da ganz besonders bei den sich aristokratisch verhaltenen Trägern alten und neuen Geldes in den USA. Einer davon ist Henry Dunbar, ein Medienmogul, der beschlossen hat, seinen Konzern vor der Zeit an seine drei Töchter zu geben. Die jüngere Tochter - die von seiner zweiten Frau stammte - hat sich dagegen verwahrt und von ihrer Familie zurückgezogen und die anderen beiden haben einen noch größeren Ehrgeiz und versuchen ihren Vater durch psychiatrische Gutachten und geschäftliche Winkelzüge endgültig zu entmachten. Und so findet sich Dunbar in einem Pflegeheim im Lake District von England. Weit von seinen New Yorker Geschäften entfernt und ständig unter Drogen gesetzt, bis ihm sein "Mitinsasse" Peter, ein alkoholkranker Komiker, aufwühlt und zur gemeinsamen Flucht bewegt. Nun beginnt ein Wettlauf zwischen der guten und den beiden bösen Töchtern auf der Suche nach dem Vater in den schneebedeckten Hügeln Englands. Erstere möchte ihren Vater retten - und sich mit ihm versöhnen -, während die anderen beiden nur ihre höchst eigenen Ziele verfolgen. Ohne dabei wirklich die Motive und Gefühle ihrer jeweiligen Ehepartner, Liebhaber und Untergebenen zu beachten, die jeweils auch ihre ganz eigenen Vorstellungen von ihrer Zukunft und der des Unternehmens haben. Und es gibt auch durchaus noch alte Mitstreiter, die dem alten Dunbar gegenüber loyal sind. Intrigen, große und kleine Erkenntnisse über das eigene Leben und über die Beziehung zu seinen Mitmenschen und eine sehr durchdachte und ansprechende - udn insbesondere auch zitierbare - Sprache machen diese moderne Adaption von Shakespeares "King Lear" zu einer passenden Würdigung dieses eher düsteren Stücks, das hier noch ein wenig mehr mit Humor versehen wird.

A great read. Keeps you on your feet and wants you to come back to the book to know what’s going to happen next.

Hard work but an interesting concept

Teils genial (zB Zitate, Charaktereigenschaften, Verfremdungen), teil flapsig und langwierig. Ingesamt kommt mir zu wenig von der Atmosphäre des Klassikers rüber. Die Dunbar-Story ist flacher. Trotzdem eine interessante Alternative und möglicherweise ein moderner Ansatz an Shakespeare heranzuführen.