Anne Tyler is one of my favorite authors (this is the third book of hers I’ve reviewed this year), and that is the only reason I was willing to read Vinegar Girl, a modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew. I was surprised to find that I actually enjoyed reading this.
The modern twist in Vinegar Girl is that the “shrew” character, Katherine, is the daughter of an eccentric scientist, Louis Battista. Louis’s lab assistant, Pyotr, is in the U.S. on a visa which is about to expire, and Louis is desperate not to lose him. He convinces Kate to marry him in order to get him a green card. Kate is 29 years old, a college dropout who lives with her father and teenage sister Bunny, loves to garden, and works as a preschool teacher’s assistant. She’s constantly on the verge of being fired (for instance, she told one little four-year-old that another child in the class could draw better than her), she doesn’t seem to have any friends, and she is the definition of “piss and vinegar.” I love her, I think more than I am supposed to, and I found her to be very sympathetic. Her life has been full of disappointments and sadness, and it’s made her a little hard.
Even though Vinegar Girl is a Shakespeare retelling, it still seems like classic Tyler. It takes place in Baltimore, of course. The characters are quirky, three-dimensional, and given to using old-fashioned turns of phrase. Not always, but lots of times, Tyler includes a sort of final dramatic speech that is supposed to illuminate the main themes of the book. Usually these are fantastic and I’ve cried at more than one of them. The one in Vinegar Girl, however, kind of struck the wrong chord for me. I thought Tyler had done a great job of modernizing a very dated tale, but the speech at the end seemed like something a 50s heroine might say, rather than someone in 2016 (at least, I hope). But for the most part this is standard Tyler, and if you like her, you’ll like this.
I just put this one on my list!