Vinegar Girl

The third book in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, a major global initiative the Guardian calls "The great rewriting project of the 21st century"

Shakespeare's controversial comedy The Taming of the Shrew sees wilful, independent Katherina transformed into a willing, obedient wife to Petruchio. It is one of Shakespeare's most re-visited plays, with adaptations includingKiss Me Kate, and 10 Things I Hate About You.

Anne Tyler's delightful Vinegar Girl features Kate, a socially awkward young woman, adored by the preschool children she teaches but misunderstood by her peers. Her father is a scientific genius, but not so great on emotions. About to lose his (equally genius, equally socially inept) research assistant, Pyotr Cherbakov, because of visa problems, and desperate to save the project that is his life's work, he comes up with a plan: Kate will marry Pyotr who will then be able to stay in the country and finish the project. The plan sounds perfect, except for one small hitch: Kate.

ANNE TYLER is the author of twenty bestselling novels. Her most recent, A Spool of Blue Thread, was a Sunday Times bestseller and shortlisted for both the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize. She has won the Pulitzer Prize and the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, which recognizes a lifetime's achievement in books, as well as being nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as "the greatest novelist writing in English."
Vinegar Girl sees Anne Tyler going behind the scenes of one of Shakespeare's most controversial yet enduring (Kiss Me Kate, 10 Things I Hate About You) plays: "You know how sometimes a friend will tell you something that happened to her, and you think, wait, there must be more to it than that, I'm sure there's another side to this. Well, that's how I've always felt about The Taming of the Shrew." The author lives in Baltimore, MD.


From the Hardcover edition.