"Like a glass of champagne, bubbly, moreish and you don't want it to end"
"The literary equivalent of a huge box of beautiful hand made chocolate truffles, a total indulgence"
The above are two quotes on the back of the new Penny Vincenzi novel, The Best of Times. While I agree that yes her books are moreish and lovely and you don't want them to end, I cannot help but feel that this is all rather condescending. Another quote on the inside jacket says that she is 'the doyenne of the blockbuster'
Can't argue with what is said but I do feel that not enough critical thought is given to each PV book as it is published. She has now written some fourteen novels, all of which I have read with various levels of enjoyment. She wrote a simply wonderful trilogy about the Lytton Family and the publishing house they founded in the 1920s, bringing the story up to the present day, and it was quite brilliant, beautifully written and a real page turner.
Her latest novel begins with a bad motorway crash, a crash which changes the course of the lives of many of those involved. Jonathan, a successful, handsome, married surgeon returning from a visit to his mistress and in a place where he has no business to be; Georgia a young actress on her way to London for an audition for a part that could make her career; Toby the bridegroom, along with his best man, again one of them with a secret that places them on the motorway when they should be somewhere else; Mary, a widow travelling to the airport to meet her first love and then there is William, a young farmer who witnesses the crash.
We have the prelude to it all, getting to know the different characters and why they are all heading for this particular stretch of the motorway at this time, then the crash itself, and then the aftermath when relationships are tested and secrets and lies are exposed.
I am aware that this sounds like a publisher's blurb and all a tad facile, but I assure you it isn't. You really care about the characters and what happens to them and, yes perhaps the ending is a little too neat and tidy with happiness all round for those who deserve it, but it is a very satisfying read and, as usual, will be dismissed by most 'serious' readers. I wrote about Penny Vincenzi some two years ago now in my post here, and I had a lot of comments from those who agreed with me and who enjoyed her books. I do hope that in 2009 a lot more of you will read this post and give her books a whirl.
I think she is terrific.
