Bingo Review: Shakespeare retelling - Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

I picked this one up for my bingo reading challenge because I have seen a number of the Hogarth Shakespeare retellings floating around Booktube, and this one just happened to catch my eye at the library. 

This is a retelling of “The Taming of the Shrew”, and it follows Kate, a college-dropout (or more like kick-out) who is living with her dad and taking care of her younger teenaged sister. 

When her dad’s research assistant Pyotr finds himself in need of a green card, Kate’s dad hatches a plan to get Kate to marry him so he can stay and work in the laboratory. Kate of course takes great offense at being treated like property, but almost in spite of herself she finds that she sort of likes Pyotr. 

I read this one without having read the play, so I can’t say how faithful it is to the original play. I imagine it is quite faithful, because it felt a little rushed, like we just had a number of markers to hit and we needed to hit them sooner rather than later. I read this in about half a day, and I am not a particularly fast reader, so that speaks volumes to the length of this book. Saying that, I did really enjoy the story, but I would like it to have developed more slowly. 

I really liked Kate, especially her attitude with the children at the school, but because the plot moved so fast, her decision to help her father out did seem a bit out of character for her in my view. I know they had a heart-to-heart in the kitchen and all, but still. I myself am a bit of a vinegar girl, so I would have liked for her to hold on to that part of herself just a little longer, instead of becoming super domestic and accommodating that fast. I also really liked Pyotr, once you got to know him a bit more. He does have some moments though where he seems to be super stubborn and egotistic and Kate even calls him out on it, but apparently it doesn’t change. Kate’s sister Bunny also calls him out on it, but he couldn’t care less about her. I actually quite liked her, even though she is set up to be the selfish, dumb blonde who is all about clothes and boys. But she has her moments, like when she calls out Pyotr and their dad for their crap and tries to tell Kate not to lose herself like she seems about to do with Pyotr. I would have liked to see how Bunny fended for herself in the world after this book. 


In conclusion I really liked this story, even though all of the characters seemed to develop too fast for my taste. I gave this 3 stars out of 5 on Goodreads. 

EDIT: This post was written quite a while ago, when I was still attempting to do my Bingo Board Reading Challenge. I was going to read the play this was based on after reading the book, but I never got around to it. So I decided to just post this review and if in the future I decide to read the play I can compare the two then. 

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