Vinegar Girl

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What to expect

‘You can’t get around Kate Battista as easily as all that’

Kate Battista is feeling stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister Bunny? Plus, she’s always in trouble at work – her pre-school charges adore her, but the adults don’t always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner.

Dr Battista has other problems. After years out in the academic wilderness, he is on the verge of a breakthrough. His research could help millions. There’s only one problem: his brilliant young lab assistant, Pyotr, is about to be deported. And without Pyotr…

When Dr Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he’s relying – as usual – on Kate to help him. Kate is furious: this time he’s really asking too much. But will she be able to resist the two men’s touchingly ludicrous campaign to win her round?

Anne Tyler’s retelling of The Taming of the Shrew asks whether a thoroughly modern, independent woman like Kate would ever sacrifice herself for a man. The answer is as individual, off-beat and funny as Kate herself.

'I loved Kate and Pyotr and the way they discover the oversized, tender, irreverent relationship that fits them... It is joyful' Rachel Joyce

‘Read her books and she can actually change your view, change how you see the world’ Judy Finigan, Mail on Sunday

‘Tyler writes with an apparent effortlessness which conceals great art’ Helen Dunmore, Stylist

‘Tyler’s sentences are wholly hers, instantly recognisable and impossible to duplicate’ Hanya Yanigihara, Observer

‘A new novel from Tyler is always a treat’ Daily Mail

Critics Review

It's knockabout comedy at its best, genuinely laugh-out-loud funny and, indeed, may be her funniest book to date
Daily Mail
The worst wedding in history ... vintage Anne Tyler
The Times
It's every subtle shade of funny, heart-breaking and ultimately life-affirming
Grazia
Funny, thought-provoking, essential
The Sunday Telegraph (Stella)
Delightful, ingenious and convincing… Anyone who values good writing and the intelligent observation and depiction of how people feel, think and speak will enjoy it too
Scotsman
There is much of Tyler's trademark wit and sharp observation here. She shifts effortlessly from humour to pathos and creates emotion without any hint of sentimentality ... Funny and poignant
Sunday Express
Full of Tyler's signature virtues -- domestic details, familial conflict, emotional ambivalence, a sharp sense of place… Novels such as Anne Tyler’s, which are so precise and current, are like photographs or digital clock faces that tell us where we are and where we are coming from at the same time. Vinegar Girl is an earthy reflection of this fleeting moment, both lively and thoughtful
New York Times Book Review
Tyler’s signature skill as a novelist is portraying her characters and her setting with such precise and amusing detail … that pretty soon the reader is drawn in, willy-nilly. We know where this is heading, yet she does a great job putting up the roadblocks and incorporating the surprising curves… Novels such as Anne Tyler’s, which are so precise and current, are like photographs or digital clock faces that tell us where we are and where we are coming from at the same time. ‘Vinegar Girl’ is an earthy reflection of this fleeting moment, both lively and thoughtful.
New York Times Book Review
Tyler's deepest purpose is to challenge the premisses of Shakspeare's comedy... Her gentle, funny novel insists that it is possible, in spite of our customarily blind perversities, to find unexpected ways of breaking free from self-destruction
Times Literary Supplement
This sparky, intelligent spin on Shakespeare's controversial classic demolishes the old saw that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar
The Guardian

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