*** As read on Radio 4 *** '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 Pyotra 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

Author Biography

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 recognises 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.'