A Time to Dance

A punctilious, retired English banker in his mid-50s falls obsessively in love with a spunky 18-year-old Irish girl, Bernadette Kennedy. To his amazement, his mad passion is reciprocated. For the nameless narrator, the affair represents ``one last chance for love,'' an escape from tending to his bedridden wife, Angela. For Bernadette, brainy but a dropout, their clandestine companionship and long lovemaking sessions in England's Lake District help to overcome the trauma of having been raped at age 13. Bragg, novelist ( The Maid of Buttermere ) and biographer of Richard Burton, weakens this partly epistolary novel by telling most of it through the voice of the self-centered, self-deluding narrator. When the affair comes crashing down to earth as several ironies separate the lovers, the quirky story is transformed into something deeply touching, tragic, heartfelt and fine. (Jan.)