Vinegar Girl

WowEver notice a common theme in back to back books you ve read Then wonder if there is a reason these books are in your space at the moment I had recently read Stolen Innocence , by Elissa Wall, a memoir, about her growing years as a member of the Utah s FLDS polygamist sect.ming a teenage bride against her desires the story about how she broke free Elissa became known for her captivating testimony in the courtroom which helped send a man practicing abusive behavior to prison Vinegar Girl , a m [...]

3 stars The problem with Vinegar Girl is that it was written by Anne Tyler This means that my expectations were really high because Tyler is such a lovely nuanced writer of contemporary American middle class family life The other problem with Vinegar Girl is that it is part of a project to render contemporary versions of Shakespeare s plays, and this story is based on The Taming of the Shrew And, really, how do you credibly construct a work of contemporary American fiction around the story of a [...]

This is the first Anne Tyler book that I have read and a little way in I was thinking that this novel is not for me However, I persisted and almost without me being aware of it, I was being charmed and drawn into the story Kate runs the family household, and looks after her absent minded scientist father, Dr Battista, and her volatile younger sister, Bunny Kate is taken for granted and has put her life on hold for her family She is taken aback and furious when her father suggests that she marrie [...]

As a retelling of Taming of the Shrew 1 starAs a stand alone story regardless of the source material 2.5 starsSaying that this is a retelling of Taming of the Shrew is like saying The Shining is a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk because the main characters are both named Jack I have read Taming of the Shrew and seen it performed several times and this was so far from anything I have seen that I didn t even recognize the story They had a few key lines and some similar names, but it would have [...]

I admit that I ve never read The Taming of the Shrew I couldn t even make it all the way through the synopsis before I had to give up in confusion all those Shakespearean concealed identities may work on the stage, but not in summary So perhaps I m not the best person to review this book there are probably callbacks to the play that I m completely missing On the other hand, I firmly believe that these novelistic reimaginings should work as novels all on their own You may get out of Bridget Jone [...]

I love The Taming of the Shrew and this was by acclaimed author Anne Tyler whose novels I have so enjoyed, so of course I was thrilled to acquire an advanced copy of this book , but I must admit I just wasn t as taken with it as I hoped I would be Sure it was witty and even funny , but it didn t really connect me to the play as I was expecting While I appreciate the intent of the Hogarth Shakespeare project which sees Shakespeare s works retold by acclaimed and bestselling novelists of today Cro [...]

MY BLOG Melissa Martin s Reading ListWhen I read the blurb to the book, I thought it sounded like something I would enjoy I had no idea how much I would like it The book is hilarious I have never read William Shakespeare s The Taming Of The Shrew but I certainly want to now I fell in love with the character Kate, she cracked me up through out the book I love the way she just says it like it is and I found my self coughing at times because she had me laughing so much Kate lives with her dad who i [...]

Half an hour after I closed this book and I am still smiling I always enjoy Anne Tyler s writing and it was a pleasure to read this modern version of The Taming of the Shrew It has been years since I read the original and I have forgotten all but the bare bones of it This mattered not at all as Vinegar Girl is a delightful book in its own right I feel Kate is not as shrewish as her namesake but she was realistic in her behaviours and still likeable despite them I thought Pyotr had a lot beneath [...]

Retelling one of the most famous plays of the Bard, placing it in our boring modern era, is not an easy task However, Vinegar Girl is anything but boring I always thought that The Taming of the Shrew has some of the quirkiest characters created by Shakespeare, and the protagonists in Vinegar Girl are as quirky as you can get The story takes place in 21st century Balti Katherine is changed to Kate, Petruchio has become Pyotr, Bianca is Bunny and Senior Baptista is now Dr Battista What I found ext [...]

For a book called Vinegar Girl, this novel is surprisingly delightful.Anne Tyler, whom I adore, has written a modern version of Shakespeare s The Taming of the Shrew as part of the Hogarth series We meet Kate Battista, a sharp young woman who works at a preschool and takes care of her father s home Her dad is a scientist who doesn t want to lose his Russian research assistant, Pyotr, so the father schemes for Kate to marry him so he can stay in America Naturally, Kate resists, and there is some [...]

This was a nice and enjoyable story Though I did feel I received a good feel for the characters, I wanted Kate to be sharper, acerbic and the plodding Pytor just seems confused, not sure of his role in this story Wanted this story to, have oomph, energy but it remained just a nice story.

I know that some Anne Tyler Shakespeare fans were less than enthused about this book, but I absolutely loved it I never read The Taming of the Shrew and am not a fan of Shakespeare gasp , so I had no comparisons to make there However, I am a huge fan of Anne Tyler and have read all her previous books, but, unlike some Tyler fans who were disappointed in this one, I thought it had all the elements that make her novels so much fun to read.Setting Balti checkEccentric characters checkSlightly dysfu [...]

I listened to this as an audiobook, and the readers truly brought the novel to life.Kate is working as a preschool assistant, a job she is not totally suited for She cares for her father and vapid younger sister, Bunny Her mother died when Kate was young, and her father is opsessed with his research work at Johns Hopkins Kate has little in the way of of a social life, with few goals for the future But she is shocked when her father propositions her with the notion of marrying his research assist [...]

3.5 This is the most fun I ve had with the Hogarth Shakespeare series so far, as well as my favorite of the three Anne Tyler novels I ve read Yes, it s set in Balti Kate Battista, the utterly tactless preschool assistant, kept cracking me up Her father, an autoimmune researcher, schemes for her to marry his lab assistant, Pyotr, so he can stay in the country after his visa expires The plot twists of the final quarter of the novel felt a little predictable, but I was won over by the good natured [...]

Anne Tyler hates Shakespeare s plays All of them But she hates The Taming of the Shrew the most.So she rewrote it Vinegar Girl, her 21st novel, drags shrewish Kate into the modern age It s such a crazy story, Tyler says from her home in Balti People behave so inexplicably that you just know there s another side to it Someone s exaggerating somebody s putting his own spin on things Let s just figure out what really happened What really happens in Tyler s revision makes a little sense than Shakes [...]

I quite liked this quirky little book mostly because I liked the Kate character so much I never read The Taming of the Shrew, so I don t know if Tyler does a credible job of honoring the original It had to have been hard, because I know enough to know that the play s subject matter and POV is WAY outdated.Nothing earth shattering or profound here, just snarky fun.

3.5 stars RTC.

Copy furnished by Net Galley in exchange for a review.Anne Tyler s easy familiarity with skewed family relationships and eccentric characters seems watered down in Vinegar Girl Not a great deal of flavor for me, almost as though it needed salt or something.The old adage that you can catch flies with honey than with vinegar is wrestled down to the ground with a simple question posed by Kate Why would you want to attract flies I like that.True confession time I never learned to beat with Shakespe [...]

Hovering over 2 stars says It was ok That s how I feel about this It was ok It took me a while to get through it I thought Anne Tyler did an excellent job telling the story and I thought the characters were distinct Her Russian accent was great.I think the only character I liked was Bunny She was the only one who saw things how they were I didn t like Kate She s 29 and that s the best she can behave at work I didn t like Pyodr either He seemed like a good guy mostly I felt better about the book [...]

While I was familiar with The Austen Project, I had no idea Shakespeare s works were getting a modern touch until I came across Vinegar Girl Anne Tyler s take on The Taming of the Shrew A quick look on GoodReads shows the general consensus is that the book is pretty good, but not great I ll go out on a limb and say I really enjoyed it Not sure it resonated because this is my first Anne Tyler gasp , because I can have some shrew like tendencies myself, or because the book I read just prior to thi [...]

Earlier this week I attended a meeting held in one of the rooms at the library Afterward, I had to pick up a relative at a location nearby, but had some empty time in between and realized I had forgotten to bring a book Well Pyotr in this novel points out Americans are wont to preface their sentences with empty words such as this one , I turned right back around, straight to the new titles shelf and immediately chose this It fit the bill a phrase Pyotr would like he has a thing for American idio [...]

After having finished this book which was my first novel from the Hogarth Shakespeare series, I have to say that I love this concept of retelling Shakespeare s plays in a modern format Vinegar Girl is a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew and it is written by one of my most beloved authors Anne Tyler I looked up a synopsis of The Taming of the Shrew while reading this retelling, because I needed to know what the story was a retelling of It turns out that the similarities between the two are ver [...]

4.5 starsClassic novels rewritten by well known authors seems to be the new trend lately The Jane Austin novels have been adapted by several authors such as Val McDermid, Alexander McCall Smith and Curtis Sittenfield Now there appears to be a series of Shakespearian books reworked by modern writers I have always liked Ann Tyler and couldn t imagine how she would redo Taming of the Shrew There are some views of a marriage controlled by the man and the setting of Balti Tyler always sets her books [...]

Well, then This is my second foray into the Hogarth Shakespeare series I d never heard of the project until a couple of weeks ago, but essentially, various commercial authors have been enlisted to rewrite half a dozen or so of the works of Shakespeare in a contemporary format Last week, I read a new version of The Tempest Hag Seed by Margaret Atwood and absolutely loved it This Not so much.I ve read The Taming of the Shrew and have seen the old movie Kiss Me, Kate and loved both of them Yes, by [...]

I read a lot of books this month, and most of them were okay to good, but it was hard to pick a stand out I m naming this as my favorite because it was the perfect kind of palette cleanser I breezed through it in a couple of days and really enjoyed the snarkiness of the narrator and the twists on a familiar plot If you re looking to get out of a reading slump, this just might do it Molly Wettafrom The Best Books We Read In October 2016 bookriot 2016 10 31 riot r ____________________Hogarth s Sha [...]

Oh my, I think I hated almost every minute of this book I did not like the main character and I found the plot to be insanely mundane and dull I ve never read The Taming of the Shrew so possible could be something that took away from my reading experience I found Kate to be an incredibly unlikeable character Pyotr is honestly the only character that I enjoyed because had some funny lines Most of the characters were extremely one dimensional and almost like caricatures of real people Ugh, I was s [...]

This is a wonderfully charming retelling of The Taming of the Shrew It s warm, funny and a delight to read.Kate is stuck Her life is going nowhere, through a combination of indecision, insecurity, lethargy To compensate the comments coming her way, she s given to biting retorts, which protect her vulnerable, inner self Through a number of antics and encounters, she slowly opens to the realization that this life is hers and it s up to her to make her dreams come true Pyotr is a wonderfully enchan [...]

Anne Tyler s Vinegar Girl is a part of the ambitious Hogarth Press project to retell Shakespeare s works in this case, Taming of the Shrew by today s acclaimed novelists As a result, readers will want to judge the book in two ways how does it succeed in its modern retelling of the Shakespeare classic And, how does it compare to Anne Tyler s oeuvre of quirky and wonderful novels Let s take the first question first In the Shakespeare play, a beautiful young woman Bianca is wooed by two suitors but [...]

I am really enjoying this Hogarth Shakespeare series, where prominent authors are retelling Shakespeare s works I must confess that I ve not read anything by Anne Tyler ever before, but I will check out her other works based on how much I loved Vinegar Girl This is Tyler s version of The Taming of the Shrew which is NOT my favourite Shakespearean play, although I did enjoy the latest version of it that I ve seen performed.I wondered how Tyler would make the basic plot palatable to the modern wo [...]

Well, my first Anne Tyler novel was kind of meah It would have been a meah regardless of the author, but given that Tyler is a Pulitzer Prize winner, I expected , much .The only thing I wanted from this retelling of Shakespeare s Taming of the Shrew was that the main heroine, in our case, Kate Battista, were a feisty, spirited, opinionated woman While Kate wasn t the demure, pretty, blonde, every man s fantasy kind of woman, she was far from being feisty or spirited If anything she was kind of b [...]