Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

A bit less taming and a lot less shrew

Vinegar Girl is part of a project curated by Hogarth Press which sees modern writers retell and re-imagine some of Shakespeare's most popular work. In this case The Taming of the Shrew (1590) gets the Anne Tyler treatment in this novel which relocates the story from Padua to modern day Baltimore. 

Anne Tyler knows that audiences are more than familiar with the source material whether via Shakespeare's play itself or through myriad adaptations from Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate to the Hollywood romcom 10 Things I Hate About You. So, rather than retell the story Tyler deconstructs the elements and rebuilds the narrative for a contemporary audience with a more developed view of gender politics. 

The eponymous Vinegar Girl is  Kate Battista daughter of a scientist at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University. When Dr Battista needs to find a way to extend the visa for his star student research assistant, Pyotr, he conceives of a plan to have him marry his daughter. This re-imagining of the courtship into a green card  marriage is believable, credible and Tyler-esque but results in a bit less taming and a lot less shrew  

Kate is headstrong, working as a teaching assistant she is frequently in trouble for speaking too honestly to the children in her care, but her demands are for the most part accepted by Pyotr which limits the humour and tension that Shakespeare creates between Petruchio and Katerina. Gone are the polarised gender roles that so defines The Taming of the Shrew. 

Though Kate's sister Bunny does appear in the story she plays a much reduced role to Shakespeare's Bianca which is an oversight as the novel could have retold the story with much greater depth. Vinegar Girl is an enjoyable read but best considered in its own right rather than as a retelling of The Taming of The Shrew for which it falls short. 

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler published by Hogarth, 272 pages