Vinegar Girl

*I received this ebook from Vintage Publishing via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.*

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler is part of the Hogarth series, which features retellings of and modern takes on Shakespeare’s works. This one is a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew. Kate Battista is a socially rather awkward curmudgeon. She is basically taking full care of her ditzy sister Bunny and absent-minded father, the brilliant scientist Dr Battista. The whole family is extremely set in their ways. Enter Pyotr, Dr Battista’s Russian research assistant whose visa is expiring. If you know anything at all about the original play, the rest really won’t come as a surprise: Kate’s father is hell-bent on marrying them off to get his assistant to stay in the country. However, differently from the original, the novel focuses more on Kate’s thoughts and feelings, than the machinations and countless admirers of her little sister.

In brief, I liked it a lot. It had a strong vibe of The Rosie Project in the sense that neither protagonist can read social cues very well, or in this case, Kate just doesn’t care about them. There was a lot of awkwardness and cringe-worthy moments stemming from total incongruence with even the most basic rules of politeness in society. At first glance, this rendered Kate almost completely unlikeable. However, several more chapters in, I suddenly found myself torn between disliking and liking her; it almost creeped up on me. The reader sees how a father’s inattention made Kate the way she is, which makes her way easier to understand. The small insecurities that started peeking through made her infinitely more relatable and likeable. What is more, the impending marriage upsets the careful routine and balance that ruled her life so far, and she’s finally made to leave her comfort zone behind.

The family dynamic was presented extremely well. They all live in a sort of stasis; there are the same exact foods and routines to which everyone adheres. It made for a really strange reading experience, because at first it was hard to understand why anyone would put up with this kind of behaviour. Dr Battista’s character was the most peculiar and I didn’t really know what to think of him. He was selfish in a helpless way and almost came off as mean. Whereas Kate went through an obvious change, Dr Battista stayed largely the same – not really understanding his motives, or at least not thinking them through.

I did enjoy the writing style a lot. It was lyrical and yet so simple at the same time. The novel itself was rather slim and thus a really quick read. It probably doesn’t have the levity of Anne Tyler’s other works (not that it’s asinine or anything), but it was still a cracking read.  The humour was extremely well presented. I really enjoyed reading the novel despite the fact that I knew exactly where the narrative was going, as would anyone who knows even a bit about the original play (or has seen the countless film adaptations). Like I said above, it’s not a perfect one-to-one retelling of the original. Instead, this novel mixes aspects from different cultures with timeless notions of romance.

Plotwise, not much happened, but I was still interested in the story and found it almost impossible to put the book down. It is really such an oddball of a book. The finale was very comical and almost came off as a farce. I did like how Kate wasn’t made out to be completely subservient, so the ideas of homesickness and gender relations made this a powerful read for me. All in all, it’s a lovely romance and a comedy of manners. It brought a smile to my face, even though I’m still not completely sure what this book was trying to do. Four stars!

“It’s like men and women are in two different countries! I’m not ‘backing down’, as you call it; I’m letting him into my country. I’m giving him space in a place where we can both be ourselves.”