Book review: Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

The fiftieth book I read in 2016 was Vinegar Girl, a modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew in the Hogarth Shakespeare series by Anne Tyler.  First of all, with the possible exception of Isabella's sudden command marriage at the end of Measure for Measure, there is no Shakespeare that has aged less well.  The gender politics on display in Shrew are violently unpleasant to the modern sensibility, and Tyler deserves respect merely for taking on the challenge of a modern retelling without subverting it by turning it from a comedy to a tragedy and the Petruchio figure from the hero to the villain of the piece.

Above and beyond that, however, Tyler deserves accolades not merely for tackling the story but for knocking it out of the park!  Vinegar Girl was one of the best books I read all year.  In this version, Kate is a twenty-something college drop-out, splitting her time between almost getting fired from her job as a teacher's assistant at a preschool for not being polite enough to the parents and taking care of the home she shares with her workaholic scientist father and remarkably pretty (and remarkably entitled) fifteen-year-old sister.  Petruchio is Pyotr, a Russian lab assistant working with her father on an important experiment whose visa is about to expire.  The obvious solution to Dr. Battista is that Pyotr should marry Kate and get his green card.

When Kate objects to marrying a complete stranger, her father is shocked that she could be so selfish not to make his scientific work a priority; after all, it's just a legality.  Pyotr, however, expects Kate to be his wife in more than name only, an eventuality that never occurred to the work-obsessed Dr. Battista who objects to his live-in housekeeper moving out; and Kate begins to see marriage to Pyotr as a chance to escape her father and sister and live for herself for a change.

Both Vinegar Girl and Shrew deal with a situation which was common in Shakespeare's day but is considered barbaric in modern American culture: the arranged marriage.  It is to Tyler's credit that she explores how such an institution can work, as it has at least as well as the love match throughout history and in some parts of the world today.  The slow warming of Kate toward Pyotr, who initially seems to display no attractive qualities but makes a real and touching effort to make a welcoming home for his new wife, is emotionally stirring.  Perhaps it is only because it's so rarely depicted, but I found the growing affection between two people who make an effort to be kind to one another more moving than yet another story of irresistible passion and immediate chemistry.