- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd; First edition (7 Jun 1990)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0340529113
- ISBN-13: 978-0340529119
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.4 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,008,568 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Time To Dance
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Product Description
Review
'The narrative of the obsession is told with great verve and conviction, from the first fortuitous encounter...to the open-ended conclusion' (Penelope Lively, Evening Standard )
'Vibrantly erotic...brave and searingly honest..compulsively gripping' (Graham Lord, Sunday Times )
'It is a sexy book. It is a romantic book. Its heart is the dream of great passion' (Philippa Gregory, The Sunday Times )
'The key to the success of the book is its simplicity and unpretentiousness...makes convincing the disorderly and unreasoning passion of the orderly and reasoning man' (Rose Tremain, Listener ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
'Vibrantly erotic...brave and searingly honest..compulsively gripping' (Graham Lord, Sunday Times )
'It is a sexy book. It is a romantic book. Its heart is the dream of great passion' (Philippa Gregory, The Sunday Times )
'The key to the success of the book is its simplicity and unpretentiousness...makes convincing the disorderly and unreasoning passion of the orderly and reasoning man' (Rose Tremain, Listener ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Product Description
A novel which recounts the passion of a retired bank manager and his love for an 18 year-old solicitor's secretary. They meet when she wins an essay competition of which he is the judge, and the novel is in the form of a letter to her. The author's previous book include "The Maid of Buttermere".
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this book when it first came out in 1990, twelve years on, it still has not lost its power to convey powerful emotions to me through the sheer power of its prose and Melvyn Bragg's beautiful descriptions of the English Lakes district.
'A Time To Dance' chronicles the love affair in 1989 England between a retired 54 year old bank manager (of whom we never know his name) and 18 year old school-leaver Bernadette Kennedy who is from the 'wrong side of the tracks' socially. The book itself takes the form of a letter from the bank manager to Bernadette after the ending of their affair, chronicling their affair from beginning to end. Despite the fact that the bank manager is married, with an invalid wife, the affair itself is not presented as a cheap, sordid affair, purely based on sex. Rather, the affair is seen through the eyes of the bank manager who has obviously come to a crossroads in his life with retirement and stuck in a rut of his own making. Nowhere in the book at any stage is it suggested that the bank manager has consciously set out to seduce a younger woman. Rather than following the crude, disturbing path of 'Lolita', the book is an evocative description of the healing power of love and of how age ceases to be an issue when two people are drawn to each other by love.
Set in the beauty of the Cumbrian countryside, one cannot help but be moved by the beauty of the book as Melvyn Bragg thoroughly explores the lives of the book's characters, what led them to falling in love and the lives of those close to them who are affected by their love affair. The use of the bank manager as the book's narrator adds an excellent dose of realism to the book as the bank manager experiences the ecstasy and the pain of erotic love. Once read, this book will never be forgotten.
I write this review with the encouragement of my wonderful (and younger) partner, Amelia.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm afraid I disagree with the other reviewers! I found this book incredibly laboured, over-written and ponderous. The repetition irked - if Mr Bragg can't say it in one sentence he'll say it in half a page. Erotic? I wish it was, but I found the obsessive focus on the minutiae of the relationship to be not well handled. For instance, if I put the book down at one page and picked it up to read five pages later the topic was the same, the words almost the same - introspectively over-spinning out the threads. I also found the device of 'I was raped by another man of your age' to be just that, a device to justify the may/september connection - and it felt a queasy one, to me. In short, there was too much 'telling' and not enough 'showing'. I kept waiting to be engaged by the book but it didn't happen. Frankly, he could have said all this with much more economy in a short story of 5,000 words or so, but to read the novel from cover to cover felt like eating my way through an entire wedding cake.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I found the first 100 pages a struggle, and as one reviewer said you could miss a couple of pages, and still not lose the thread of the story.
The last 100 pages were very moving, and somehow put the whole story into perspective. The bank manager, as thats how we know him, annoyed me with his self pitying, and his ability never to learn from his previous mistakes, but then thats what novel writing is all about to draw you into the narrative.
I felt Melvyn Bragg laboured sopme of the points, but he wrote evocatively of the Lake District, and I suppose how a 54 year old might feel about being besotted by a 18 year old.
A good read, that once into was difficult to put down.
The last 100 pages were very moving, and somehow put the whole story into perspective. The bank manager, as thats how we know him, annoyed me with his self pitying, and his ability never to learn from his previous mistakes, but then thats what novel writing is all about to draw you into the narrative.
I felt Melvyn Bragg laboured sopme of the points, but he wrote evocatively of the Lake District, and I suppose how a 54 year old might feel about being besotted by a 18 year old.
A good read, that once into was difficult to put down.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Poor man's Nabokov
Once again (yawn) we have a story of a respectable, middle-aged man besotted by a brilliant school-leaver. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Myra Ferrieux
A sensual and compelling book
I read this book not knowing what to expect, and was blown away by a sensual and erotic novel which will stay with me long after reading. Read more
Published on 28 Mar 2009 by Heidi
unsettling but highly insightful
When you read any work of fiction by a well known public figure you have to work a little harder on the 'suspension of disbelief'. Read more
Published on 25 Jan 2009 by Alexis Paladin
Love in the Extreme
This is a deeply profound story of love and passion. It has an emotional honesty that is rarely found and an acute awareness of all the aspects relating to love. Read more
Published on 13 April 2003 by sharon mayo
you fall in love with love, and it becomes timeless
On the lines of a Humbert Humbert in Cumbria, this book manages to evoke emotions even after the 100th time you have read it. Read more
Published on 18 Oct 2000
A very romantic, sexual book
I have read this book time and time again and have never tired of it. Melvyn Braggs description of the thoughts and feelings of a retired manager bank manager, whose life has... Read more
Published on 16 Oct 1999 by jean.tucker@virgin.net
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