She Treads Softly: Vinegar Girl

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Vinegar Girl

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

Hogarth: 6/21/16
advanced reader's edition; 240 pages
ISBN-13: 9780804141260
Hogarth Shakespeare Series

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler is a highly recommended adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew done for Hogarth Press's Shakespeare project where authors are required to modernize one of the Bard's works. Tackling a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew is a major feat in itself and Tyler does an admirable job despite the limitations placed on her due to the very nature of the project.

Kate Battista, 29, is the vinegar girl. She has firm opinions, is outspoken, and values her individuality, but has little opportunity to really exercise this trait. Kate is stuck running the house for her eccentric and needy scientist father, trying to enforce his rules with her 15 year old sister, Bunny, and working as an aide at a preschool, even though she doesn't really like children. Kate is stuck in a routine, but even she couldn't envision the plan her father has cooked up for her.

It seems that Dr. Battista's lab assistant, Pyotr Shcherbakov,is here on an O-1 visa that is about to expire and he is not sure how his research can go on without his brilliant young assistant. Dr. Battista has decided that if he can get Kate to marry Pyotr, then Pyotr won't be deported and his research will certainly be able to make some breakthroughs. After all, Kate doesn't have any suitors or real plans, and at least she can be helping him out (even more) if she'll just cooperate. Kate wishes he could just marry Pyotr himself and leave her out of it.

This is The Taming of the Shrew transformed into a tale of a marriage of convenience for a green card via Tyler's inimitable style. She uses satirical humor and a keen understanding of human nature to create characters that are memorable in their own right. Tyler notes that this is her attempt to tell the other side of the story, the part that will help make the illogical or inconceivable story in of The Taming of the Shrew make more sense today.

She does deftly retell the story in a new, compassionate way and creates some memorable characters. Really, how could anything Anne Tyler writes be bad? She has a gift. Personally, I think if Tyler were allowed to use The Taming of the Shrew simply an inspiration to plot her own story in her own way, this could have been even more successful for me. She could have done so much more with her characters if she had free reign to change the plot or add some more complexities.

Disclosure: My advanced reading copy was courtesy of the publisher for review purposes.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.