Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - Vinegar Girl

Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

5 reviews

james1star's review against another edition

medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

From the Hogarth Shakespeare titles, I read Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed last year and that was great but Anne Tyler’s ‘Taming of the Shew’ retelling was honestly very meh. In Vinegar Girl, we follow twenty nine year old Kate who feels stuck in her life, keeping house for her scientist father and younger sister whilst working at a nursery, living a life she’s not happy with and wanting something to change this. This may come in the form of her dad’s assistant Pyotr who’s about to be deported pending the end of his visa. Her dad is very keen for the two to get hitched so he’ll stay and continue their research… but is he asking for too much?

I’d say the writing was good enough, it flows and generally it was a quick fast paced read. The characters aren’t that developed outside of Kate in all honesty which was a shame, her sister Bunny and Pyotr are to some extent but not really. I did quite like what Tyler (via Kate) was trying to say about the place and societal view of women at Kate’s age, she starts to explores part of the immigrant experience and some other things but all are rather half baked and in the end I gained very little from this. I guess the overall story arc and how things progressed plot wise just wasn’t to my taste and in some ways (like the original which I haven’t read btw) she is ‘tamed’ in some sense which didn’t sit right with me, especially after a certain few things. It also just became rather boring as it went along. I found the xenophobia present in the book wasn’t handled very well and Tyler kinda paints the immigrants in the book in not the best light - Pyotr on many occasions is shown to hold rather ‘backward’ views and the way he speaks is quite harsh and I dunno… I didn’t like it. Also Ms/Mrs Liu wasn’t presented well and how she uses language despite living in America for many years seemed rather unrealistic and yh, I can’t remember the exact thing as I’ve kinda forgotten parts of this book already - and I feel the pandering to stereotypes was rather unnecessary, or at least it didn’t jam well with me. I also don’t understand why Tyler never mentioned where Pyotr was from, he just says ‘my country’ but otherwise there’s proper place/location names, maybe to not offend but then she just should’ve presented him better… no? A final point of negativity was there’s quite a lot of discourse on the animal rights/vegan/vegetarian debate but it’s extremely one sided towards anti-vegan. Characters who share these views are kinda belittled, shown to be the baddie in a sense and also to go back and forth so obviously was never vegan to begin with. I just felt this topic wasn’t given the nuance it deserved and didn’t like it.

Overall, this was fine as a contemporary, romance-kinda book but overall there was more negatives then positives, I wouldn’t really recommend it and felt it was rather half baked. I will probably give Anne Tyler a second chance but this wasn’t for me.

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mdavis26's review against another edition

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1.75

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aniwillow's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

It was too short for me. About half way through the book I wanted it to be longer and then towards the end I wish the entire book was different.

the final speech and the epilogue made me legitimately angry. The whole wedding and everything after that was so shitty. Pyotr was rough and then seemingly nice and oh so cute and quirky! And then he is a psychotic aggressive assaulter! Then her bullshit speech about how bad men have it. It’s true that men’s mental health is over looked and that it is important for men to speak about what is bothering them but that doesn’t excuse the fact that he assaulted a man, harassed his mother, broke into their home, and verbally assaulted his wife and sister-in-law! Not okay!

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sarahholliday's review against another edition

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lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This is my first Anne Tyler book, and while it won't be my last (I've had several people tell me not to judge her writing on this book alone), I was very disappointed with the book overall.

The story felt overly rushed, with several half-baked plot points and unlikeable characters who never quite manage to redeem themselves (though I think we're supposed to think they do?).

Ultimately, I think this was a missed opportunity for a retelling of Taming of the Shrew.

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kylieqrada's review against another edition

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lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This was the definition of MEH for me, so I'm giving it a 2 ⭐s, even though it is SO HARD for me. I listened to it on audio on my commute, and while I truly enjoyed the narrator and did like Kate as a character throughout the entirety of the novel, I didn't like anything else about this one. Granted, I'm not the target audience, since I have not only never read The Taming of the Shrew, I don't know what it's about, and the title sounds misogynistic to me. So why did I even pick this up? The plot sounded intriguing to me, but the intentional setting up of the protagonist as an unlikable female character, the unresolved borderline abusive behavior, and the mishandling of serious mental health disorders were a no from me, dawg.

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