I added a star because the reader here--Henry Goodman--is so very fantastic. It takes a while to set the volume appropriately as his dynamic range swings from muttering to bellowing, but hotdamn is he fantastic.

The novel itself is...fine? It wisely breaks from the strictures of King Lear early and recasts the story in broad strokes rather than some more tedious analogy, but the end comes with a suddenness that falls flat. Much of this is convincing and stands well on its own merits, but as the story nears its conclusion and returns to the sudden death of Florence (Cordelia), St. Aubyn relies too much on the emotional weight we might carry over from King Lear. Some decompression--a bit more to flesh out the relationship between Dunbar and Florence--would help us feel her death and Dunbar's despair more acutely. Lear is the only Shakespeare play that really makes me feel, and that depth is lost here in a conclusion that rushes itself, seemingly out of fidelity to the source material.