A TIME TO DANCE, NO TIME TO...

A TIME TO DANCE, NO TIME TO WEEP by Rumer Godden (Quill / William Morrow: $9.95) Rumer Godden’s “novelist’s urge to endow everyday facts with fictive interest” (her teacher’s words) befits her account of her colorful life between 1907 and 1946. Although born in England, Godden lived half her life in India, both as a child and as an adult. In this memoir, she tells of the schoolteacher who encouraged her writing, of the dancing school she directed for Eurasian girls, of her marriage to a man whose debts used up most of the royalties she acquired from her best seller, “Black Narcissus,” of her life in near poverty in the mountains of Kashmir with her two daughters.

Godden is best known for her numerous works of fiction and her children’s books, and much of the memoir reflects the importance of writing in her life. She quotes the hero of her own novel, “Chinese Puzzle,” who says: “It occurs to me that we were put into this world as part of its making, as a stitch or a thread is put into the weaving of a cloth or tapestry. When we die we leave a little hole and it is our duty, before we die, to see that the hole is filled and so strengthen the weave.” With “A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep” as with her other inspiriting works, Godden has more than amply filled her due.

As Times reviewer Sharon Dirlam wrote: “Godden’s gift was so rich, her observations so wise and her insights so perceptive that each page of her autobiography is a treasure house.”