The Best of Times: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bestseller Vincenzi's diverting if charmless latest delves into the lives of a massive cast brought together by a multicar accident on a London highway. The brisk, journalistic style makes it hard to fall for any of the characters, whose lives are filled with high and low drama: a truck driver racked with guilt over the accident; his terrified passenger, who flees the scene; a successful doctor trying to break up with his mistress; a groom and best man already late for the wedding due to scandalous circumstances; and a widow headed to reunite with a past love. After the crisis, their lives intertwine tangentially as, among others, the best man starts a relationship with an ER doctor, the truck driver's wife becomes close with the widow, and the mistress falls for the farmer whose land overlooks the accident scene. The story brings them all back together at the inquest, the cause of the accident is revealed and apologies are made. Though everyone gets their predictably happy ending, the way the obvious resolutions drag out makes this something like a once-enjoyable guest who has long outstayed his welcome. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Carolyn See About 300 pages into "The Best of Times," that military song about the field artillery came into my mind and wouldn't leave: "Over hill, over dale, as we hit the dusty trail . . . ." But it wasn't until a couple of hundred pages later that I understood why. Penny Vincenzi hasn't been content to write a nice piece of women's fiction. She has deployed an army of fictional troops, and she smacks them around like Gen. Patton. The central trope here is suitably violent: The best way for a lot of people to meet each other all at once is not a wedding or a church picnic but a wingding of a car crash -- with blood and guts and injuries and refrigerators and stoves whirling around like the dice of the gods, and about a dozen major characters, unhurt and hurt. I'm going to pass on naming these characters, except for a few, because you couldn't remember them anyway. The heroine here, I think, is a not-posh girl (this novel is set in England) named Abi who occasionally uses drugs and is having an affair with a hotshot doctor named Jonathan, who is married to a fairly priggish woman named Laura. Abi and Jonathan are having a huge fight in his car when the crash -- involving dozens of vehicles -- occurs. Abi gets out of the car and manages to meet a handsome dairy farmer named William whose property abuts the highway. That's four characters taken care of. There is also a pair of old public school chums who've turned out to be bankers, one decent, one awful, both of them on the brink of marriage; a self-absorbed wannabe actress of mixed blood who will pitch fits throughout the narrative; her hard-driving female agent, who will meet another doctor at the nearby hospital that takes in the many wounded; another female doctor, who will fall in love with the decent banker; and a little old lady of remarkable wit and charm who's on her way to the airport to meet an American tycoon she first fell in love with during World War II. "And those caissons go rolling along." This book isn't half as bad as it may sound so far, just wearying. There are only three truly unpleasant villains: a grumpy grown daughter of the little old lady, who wants to keep her mother from experiencing what may turn out to be the love of her life; Farmer William's scheming mother, who wants to keep her son from experiencing what may turn out to be the love of his life; and the awful young banker, who just decides to be awful one day. None of these people has any particular reason to be bad -- that's why they're villains. The rest are portrayed as balanced, even complex. But they're jerked about like yo-yos by their fretful creator. Do something deceitful, do something decent, do something right, do something dreadfully misguided! The plots range from "Will she miss him at the airport?" to "Will he lose his leg?" to "Will he die?" to "Will she get up her nerve to call him?" This last one, occurring in the final hundred pages between the female doctor and the decent banker, is particularly irritating because there isn't a reason in the world for them not to call each other, except that the author doesn't want them to. They do daydream about each other, though: "Her voice was quick and light; she never drawled, and when she smiled . . . God, when she smiled. . . . And her nose, and the way it wrinkled up when she giggled. He loved her nose." This is way past page 500, and the author has got to get busy winding up pretty soon. But she chooses to keep them all out in the dust, drilling under the sun, just a little bit longer. What can I say? "The Best of Times" isn't just a piece of fluff. Vincenzi is absolutely determined to give readers their money's worth. There's information about theater and television and wounds and sickness and lawsuits. And to end it all, she serves up a grand old English music festival in which almost every character who hasn't died shows up -- except for Jonathan the philandering husband, who prudently stays away -- to dance under a drenching English rain. (Will this weather clear up? One last plot question.) "The Best of Times" is perfectly okay, interesting even. It's just that it's a little more of a slog than an entertainment.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First US Edition edition (July 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385528248
• ISBN-13: 978-0385528245
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #88,459 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars When the Happily-Ever-Afters Come, They Arrive in Abundance, Leaving Readers Deeply Satisfied, July 20, 2009

By	Bookreporter.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

Penny Vincenzi is known for her sweeping, dramatic, often surprising sagas that usually focus on large families and associates, groups of people who have long-standing connections by virtue of blood or business (and sometimes both). In her latest novel, Vincenzi takes a startlingly different approach. Here she uses her tried-and-true approach of focusing on intersecting lives, but the lives of random strangers intersect (sometimes literally) following a harrowing traffic accident on Britain's M4 motorway between London and Wales.

THE BEST OF TIMES opens with a journalistic-style account of the fictional accident and then steps back in time, as it explores the lives of some of the key players in the accident, examining who they are and outlining how they happened to be on that particular road at that pivotal time.

At the center of the story is handsome doctor Jonathan Gilliatt, a happily married father of three who is carrying on an affair with Abi, a sexy younger woman (who happens to be in his car at the time of the accident). How will he explain her presence to the police, the newspapers --- and his wife? There's also eager groom Toby and his best man Barney, rushing to get to the church in time for Toby's wedding to Tamara, but delayed by a top-secret errand that would destroy Tamara if she knew of it. There's Mary, an elderly lady heading to London to reunite with the love of her life, an American man she met during World War II. Both of them are widowed, now finally free to be together after 60 years apart. And there's Georgia, an aspiring (but ambivalent) actress on the way to the audition of her life.

Following the catastrophic accident, other players enter the scene, including doctors who treat the wounded at the hospital, the friends and families of those involved, the police officers inquiring into the cause of the crash, and the farmer who witnesses the whole thing and becomes intimately involved with one of the crash victims. Encounters at hospitals, in hotels, and in courtrooms bring the accident participants together again and again --- often resulting in surprising connections, new opportunities, and even true love.

Vincenzi's experiment with this new approach is rewarding, especially for long-time readers who might have thought they had her formula figured out. Here she juggles multiple plot lines, a mystery or two, and several romances, all while manufacturing circumstances (many based on coincidence) to bring together these characters who come from different worlds. At times the plotline lags slightly, especially when the narrative gets bogged down in exploring who is at fault for the crash. In all likelihood, most readers won't even really care much about the outcome of that investigation; instead, they're more invested in whether or not the couples they're rooting for will wind up together.

But when the happily-ever-afters come, they arrive in abundance, leaving readers deeply satisfied even as they consider if, or how, the events of an instance can leave an impression for a lifetime.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another winner, August 9, 2009

By	shehar "shehar" (Western New York State) - See all my reviews

Another great book. Story and character development are outstanding. This book will hold your attention from first page to last.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 4.5 stars - great book, but the fluff towards the end was a little much, August 15, 2009

By	Heather A. Buettner (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you would have asked me anywhere in the first 400 pages to give a one-word description of The Best of Times, I would have said "gripping." I was totally enthralled with the stories, and the characters, who are all so well developed. It reminded me very much of the movie Love, Actually where there are lots of storylines that all flow together and culminate at the end with a feel-good-heart-warming moment that restores your faith in love. But if I'm being really honest, it did drag just a bit for me in the last 50-75 pages or so. The storylines were being neatly tied up, and I thought there was a lot of filler. That being said, I loved the characters, the story was great, and for the first 400 pages or so, it really kept you guessing. It was an interesting premise - taking a horrible tragic accident and examining how it affected all these different lives. And I really enjoyed how the author went into each person's perspective when she was telling their story. It was very believable, and rang true for the most part. Some of the characters seemed a bit stereotypical, but it wasn't enough to make me not enjoy it.

All in all, it was a great ride, that could have been about 5-10% shorter for me to really have given it five stars.