Vinegar Girl (Tyler) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl is a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, set in Baltimore, not far from Johns Hopkins. It is full of Tyler’s signature virtues—domestic details, familial conflict, emotional ambivalence, a sharp sense of place..... Tyler works around the arranged-marriage setup brilliantly by making the suitor formerly known as Petruchio a Russian research assistant on a special visa for people with "extraordinary ability," who is working for Kate’s father. He needs to marry to stay in the country, and the obvious choice is not Bunny, who is only 15, but the difficult, plain, hopeless one, Kate.... Vinegar Girl is...lively and thoughtful.
Jane Smiley - New York Times Book Review


An effective retelling, while nodding to the original text, stands on its own as a story in the way Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince responds to Hamlet and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World plays with The Tempest. Tyler succeeds in creating a world we believe in...Charming...Clever
Boston Globe


This modern adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew is vintage Tyler—crisp and funny, with quirky but believable characters…set, of course, in Tyler’s beloved Baltimore.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune


Family drama meets rom-com in a modern version of The Taming of the Shrew. Pushy dad plus entitled little sister, cute but clueless suitor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author equals must-read.
Cosmopolitan


A quirky tale that transports Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew to Tyler's modern-day Baltimore, where a father's attempt to shoehorn his daughter into a green-card marriage has, of course, an unintentionally happy ending.
W Magazine


Tyler’s smooth prose makes Vinegar Girl, one of a series of renowned authors' Shakespearean updates, a light, summer read.
Baltimore Magazine
 

 Ultimately, the tale succeeds as the kind of love story in which the most surprised people are the protagonists—which, arguably, could be said of the original as well—but Shakespeare’s powerful emotions are absent here. It is not the shrew who is tamed, but the tale itself.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) The Taming of the Shrew meets Green Card in this delightful reinvention that owes as much to Tyler's quirky sensibilities as it does to its literary forebear. Come for the Shakespeare, stay for the wonderful Tyler. —Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Resplendent storyteller Tyler (A Spool of Blue Thread, 2015) is perfectly paired with The Taming of the Shrew…Deeply and pleasurably inspired by her source, Tyler is marvelously nimble and effervescent in this charming, hilarious, and wickedly shrewd tale of reversal and revelation.
Booklist


[F]unny, fun-loving and uplifting. Those who know the original well will be intrigued by Tyler's riffs: Is the new Kate less shrewish, or simply better characterized.... In either case, the surprising ending...makes for a heartwarming conclusion to a quirky, timeless tale.
Shelf Awareness


Tyler can't help but invest this mishmash with a good deal of her own rueful humor..., but her special qualities as a writer don't make a very good fit with the original. Neither a faithful retelling nor a trenchant countertale, though agreeable enough as an afternoon's entertainment.
Kirkus Reviews