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Book Summary and Reviews of Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

Vinegar Girl

Hogarth Shakespeare Series

by Anne Tyler

  • Critics' Consensus (1):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • Published:
  • Jun 2016, 240 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Pulitzer Prize winner and American master Anne Tyler brings us an inspired, witty and irresistible contemporary take on one of Shakespeare's most beloved comedies.

Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister Bunny? Plus, she's always in trouble at work – her pre-school charges adore her, but their parents don't always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner. 

Dr. Battista has other problems. After years out in the academic wilderness, he is on the verge of a breakthrough. His research could help millions. There's only one problem: his brilliant young lab assistant, Pyotr, is about to be deported. And without Pyotr, all would be lost.

When Dr. Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he's relying – as usual – on Kate to help him. Kate is furious: this time he's really asking too much. But will she be able to resist the two men's touchingly ludicrous campaign to bring her around?

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Resplendent storyteller Tyler is perfectly paired with The Taming of the Shrew…Deeply and pleasurably inspired by her source, Tyler is marvelously nimble and effervescent in this charming, hilarious, and wickedly shrewd tale of reversal and revelation." - Booklist

"Tyler can't help but invest this mishmash with a good deal of her own rueful humor and tart compassion for her bewildered characters, but her special qualities as a writer don't make a very good fit with the original. Neither a faithful retelling nor a trenchant countertale, though agreeable enough as an afternoon's entertainment.: - Kirkus

"Ultimately, the tale succeeds as the kind of love story in which the most surprised people are the protagonists - which, arguably, could be said of the original as well - but Shakespeare's powerful emotions are absent here. It is not the shrew who is tamed, but the tale itself." - Publishers Weekly

This information about Vinegar Girl was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Cloggie Downunder

Witty and funny
“She had always been such a handful – a thorny child, a sullen teenager, a failure as a college student. What was to be done with her? But now they had the answer: marry her off. They would never give her another moment’s thought”

Vinegar Girl is the twenty-first novel by American author, Anne Tyler, and is written under the Hogarth Shakespeare banner. It is billed as William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew retold. At twenty-nine, Kate Battista is in a dead-end job she doesn’t particularly like, and saddled with looking after her air-head fifteen-year-old sister and her workaholic father. Kate is no shrinking violet though: she lets them know what irritates her in no uncertain terms. Her boss suggests she practice restraint but: “The unsatisfying thing about practicing restraint was that nobody knew you were practicing it”

So when Dr Louis Battista suggests she marry Pyotr Shcherbakov, his brilliant research assistant, whose O-1 visa is about to run out, she lets her father know how she feels: “We are not in another culture, and this is not an arranged marriage. This is human trafficking….You’re sending me to live with a stranger, sleep with a stranger, just for your own personal gain”

Pyotr tries to court Kate, despite her irritability, her rudeness and her flat refusal to help. And despite the gross insult she perceives at the suggestion, his enthusiasm, his lack of guile and his straight talking begins to weaken her resolve “…they say you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” she tells him. “Yes, they would,” Pyotr said, mysteriously. “But why would you want to catch flies, hah? Answer me that, vinegar girl”

Anne Tyler’s version of this classic Shakespeare tale is an absolute delight. Her characters are ordinary people with flaws and believable quirks; their dialogue is just as ordinary and everyday; and yet, they are endearing, each in their own way. Her descriptive prose is marvellous: “an unhealthy-looking young man with patchy beige chin whiskers that reminded Kate of lichen”. And the tale is filled with humour: the reader will find themselves smiling, chuckling and (at least at the wedding ceremony) laughing out loud. Witty and funny.

Cathryn Conroy

Laugh-Out-Loud Funny!
If just the thought of reading Shakespeare is enough to make you groan, grunt or growl, this is just the book for you!

As part of the Hogarth Shakespeare project in which the Bard's plays are retold for a modern audience by some of today's best-selling authors, the incredible Anne Tyler (Confession: She is one of my favorite writers) has created a laugh-out-loud funny and very readable post-9/11 take on Shakespeare's comedy "The Taming of the Shrew." (This isn't the first such rewrite. Exhibit A: The movie "10 Things I Hate About You.")

Set in Baltimore, the book contains all the players: Kate Battista (Katherine, the shrew), Pyotr Shcherbakov (Petruchio), Bunny Battista (Bianca), Dr. Louis Battista (Minola Baptista) and Edward Mintz (Lucentio).

Anne Tyler fans, beware! This is not your typical Anne Tyler book. Remember, she was given a specific task: Rewrite "The Taming of the Shrew." That means this book (almost) has more plot points than all her other books put together! The characters are not the quirky, eccentric, bemused beings we have come to expect from her. She is following the Bard's lead on this one. But it works--and works magnificently--as long as you know what to expect.

And while you certainly don't get Shakespeare's lyrical poetry in such a rewrite, "Vinegar Girl" might just be the impetus to send some people back to the original.

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Author Information

Anne Tyler Author Biography

Photo: Diana Walker

Anne Tyler's 50 Year Writing Career

In March 2013, Anne Tyler announced the title of her upcoming novel in an interview with the BBC. She also noted that she didn't want to finish another novel - not even this one. She described the book as a "sprawling family saga," which starts with the present generation and then moves back, one generation at a time. Fortunately, she realized she was only interested in three generations. Before this revelation, she figured A Spool of Blue Thread could go on long enough that she might die before its publication! That way she wouldn't have the hassle of the editing, polishing, promoting and worrying if the book was any good or not.

This sounds like the pressure of thinking up something new and original, combined with her obvious penchant for ...

... Full Biography
Author Interview

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