Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Textures of Life

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Hortense Calisher

Narrator: Nancy Linari

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-22-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

A study in motives, conflicts, ambitions, and fears as idealistic young newlyweds face unanticipated realities Hortense Calisher's second novel is a multigenerational story of art, family, and marriage. Opening with Liz and David's wedding and chronicling the first four years of their life together, Calisher follows the couple through their evolution into erudite, anti-materialist artists. They move into a sparse downtown Manhattan loft, prideful of their rebellious choice to lead lives unfettered by possessions. As time passes, they realize that their unbridled optimism is slowly being abraded by the disappointments of reality. With the ambiguously pleasant news that Elizabeth's mother and David's father, both widowed, are finding new love together, Calisher further explores the couple's interplay and draws piercing parallels between the idealism of youth and the sagacity of old age.

Textures of Life

Members Reviews:

Classic, timeless

The subject - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters - seems simple enough. But under Calisher's hands it becomes more complex, a beautiful tapestry. In an ornate, near voluptuous style reminiscent of Henry James, she spins a story of newlyweds David and Elizabeth. Both are artists, at least in spirit, and represent the artistic life in New York City in the late fifties, early sixties. The story covers only about four years, but in that time these two come up against the realities of daily living and the responsibilities of adulthood, and parenthood too, after their daughter May is born. They have found what they think is the perfect abode in a loft in an old converted piano factory and they design and remodel the space to suit their needs and temperaments. But this "blue heaven" space turns out to harbor a deadly threat to their baby, A nearly invisible dust rising up from the stoneworks on the lower level exacerbates little May's hidden asthma, causing periodic seizures and life-threatening attacks. A subtext, or parallel story, concerns that of their parents, both widowed, who marry each other. David's father, Nicholas, has a heart condition and has lived a careful, almost precarious life for a dozen years or so. When he marries Elizabeth's mother, Margot, he marvels at this new lease on life, telling his son that the "surprises just keep on coming." The interplay between the generations is key to this story, and Calisher skilfully interweaves their lives, although they live on opposite coasts - the older couple in California. It is only after his father's death that David begins to see how closely they have been, and still are, all connected.

"He saw. If one could imagine a loom, or looms innumerable, warp-and-woof radiating everywhere, perhaps not even from a center. The texture was so tight that one could never see, even over as much as four years of it, where any one part had begun."

This book was first published in 1963 and has been long out of print but it has a kind of timeless widsom and beauty that makes it classic. I'm glad I finally found it and read it. - Tim Bazzett, author of PINHEAD: A LOVE STORY