The Service of Clouds Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Service of Clouds Book

A mystically inclined photographer who tries to find the face of God captured in clouds; a tubercular horticulturist who experiences others' dreams; a pharmacist's assistant who sells tonics to cure homesickness and unrequited love--these are the inhabitants of Katoomba, a town high in Australia's Blue Mountains where the air is "too thin to support any certainties." Opening in 1907 and spanning nearly two decades, The Service of Clouds follows the coming-of-age of young Eureka Jones, whose town springs into life once she sees it through the eyes of photographer Harry Kitchings. But plot is never this narrative's focus. "My mother, being possessed of a practical temperament, did not use metaphors lightly: she expected them to do a full day's work," writes Falconer, and the same could be said of her novel itself. Metaphors here are meant to be taken quite literally; clouds take on double and triple symbolic duty, but they also literally "soak into the pores" of her characters' skin, "improving its texture and the quality of our blood." In fact, Falconer's metaphors do the full day's work of both characterization and plot, and at times, that load is too much to bear. The prose is magical, but it is also sometimes frustratingly abstract. No matter: Katoomba itself is vivid, and the novel's language dazzling--even when it leaves the reader standing on less than solid ground.Read More

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  • Product Description

    It is 1907 in the Blue Mountains of Australia. As the novelties of science begin to encroach on this beguiling landscape, Eureka Jones, a quiet young pharmacist's assistant, slowly begins to fall in love with Harry Kitchings, a distant stranger who has arrived to photograph clouds. The story of their courtship and its aftermath spans over seven years: a graceful, compelling meditation on the nature of love and the power of memory.

  • 0374261059
  • 9780374261054
  • Delia Falconer
  • 1 April 1998
  • Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 322
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