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The Service of Clouds
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.
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First published January 1, 1997
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About the author
Delia Falconer
25 books19 followersDelia Falconer is the author of two novels, The Service of Clouds and The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers and Selected Stories and the memoir Sydney. Her fiction and non-fiction have been widely anthologised, including in the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature. She is a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Technology, Sydney.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
September 10, 2011
There are not too many novels that I want to re-read and not too many novels that I have chanced upon about photographers. This one I have read time and again. I am besotted with Harry's photographic quest; the misty Blue Mountains; it's hidden history of being the place for the cure of TB, the madness of the air filled with eucalyptus fumes, and the sad faded romance. Harry climbs through the mountain trails with his tripod and camera ~ some I have climbed others now I will never get to, but I feel like I am there with him, and feel his obsessions with the mists and clouds and his darkroom printing."
The year the Hydro Majestic Hotel failed as a hydropathic institute Harry Kitchings fell in love with the air and stayed. Les Curtain began to feel the dusk in his lungs. It was a romantic year. Men carried thermometers and dreamed of women struck by lightning. Postmen hauled packets filled with love and human hair. Women carried notebooks and pressed storms in them like flowers. You could feel our love rising from the mountaintops. At least that is how Harry Kitchings might tell it.
What were we in love with?
It is 1907 and the Blue Mountains are filled with the grand dreams of elsewhere. Eureka Jones, a young pharmacist's assistant with historical eyes, falls in love with Harry Kitchings, a man who takes pictures of clouds and succumbs to the 'madness of photography'. Their love turns the mountains sapphire blue.
Set in a vast landscape haunted by sadness and the stories of romance which drift across it, The Service of Clouds combines the lushness of Marquez and the tenderness of Ondaatje to explore passion, illness, and the secret desires men and women bring to mountains.
It has to be 4 stars for me, but I imagine not everyone will like it. I've just remembered to add it to my read list after seeing this review of her new book "Sydney" the other day.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/...
The year the Hydro Majestic Hotel failed as a hydropathic institute Harry Kitchings fell in love with the air and stayed. Les Curtain began to feel the dusk in his lungs. It was a romantic year. Men carried thermometers and dreamed of women struck by lightning. Postmen hauled packets filled with love and human hair. Women carried notebooks and pressed storms in them like flowers. You could feel our love rising from the mountaintops. At least that is how Harry Kitchings might tell it.
What were we in love with?
It is 1907 and the Blue Mountains are filled with the grand dreams of elsewhere. Eureka Jones, a young pharmacist's assistant with historical eyes, falls in love with Harry Kitchings, a man who takes pictures of clouds and succumbs to the 'madness of photography'. Their love turns the mountains sapphire blue.
Set in a vast landscape haunted by sadness and the stories of romance which drift across it, The Service of Clouds combines the lushness of Marquez and the tenderness of Ondaatje to explore passion, illness, and the secret desires men and women bring to mountains.
It has to be 4 stars for me, but I imagine not everyone will like it. I've just remembered to add it to my read list after seeing this review of her new book "Sydney" the other day.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/...
September 14, 2023
2023 reread: The tragedy of Eureka Jones' story is not that she has loved Harry Kitchings one-sidedly for more than seven years, it is that she is forced to live her life in the same world where she loved Harry Kitchings. She is forced to see the place she calls home the way Harry Kitchings taught her to see it. In this 20 or so year long story, Delia Falconer employs an army of metaphors and serves a feast of beautiful descriptions.
The premise of the book is that Eureka who is a young woman living in The Blue Mountains with her mother and aunties,. There she meets and falls in love with cloud photographer Harry Kitchings.
‘In the six months since we met I have not seen a cloud which I have not wished to show you.’
The story is told to us through Eureka; Eureka uses three devices to tell the story, clouds, photography, and the landscape and landmarks of the Blue Mountains. The whole plot of the story is narrated in terms of how it relates to these three things. This makes for a totally narration driven story with a plot fragmented and a nonlinear timeline.
I cannot exaggerate how enjoyable this book was for me.
2021: I was devastated the first time I finished reading this book. It’s hands down the most enjoyable book I’ve read.
Delia Falconer brings the Blue Mountains landscape to life with her beautiful and spellbinding prose.
Every sentence and every page is an ode to the nature and landscape: a lament to the memories of that place.
It’s such a sad and heartbreaking story that many times I had to put the book down for a breather.
This book is a magical realism story of unrequited love that takes place in 1907 Katoomba. A girl (Eureka Jones) has moved to the Blue Mountains as a child with her mother so that they can go ‘where the clouds go’ and then falls in a decades long one sided love with a cloud photographer (Harry Kitchings).
When the Blue Mountains became popular as a tourist destination at the turn of the century, the tourism board focused mainly on the healing value of its air. This made Katoomba a popular destination for convalescence travel. I can vouch for the restorative value of the Blue Mountains myself, and reading the Service of Clouds, saying the sentences out loud as if they’re incantations and hearing the music in them, reminds me of the healing qualities of the place she’s writing about, so much, that flicking through the pages of the novel has become a form of convalescence for me.
“I first saw Harry Kitchings leaning from a basket which had been lowered over the Katoomba Falls. I saw a small, angular body in a dark suit with its back turned away from the sheer sandstone wall which rained water spray and yellow flowers. [..] He had come here to test his faith.”
The character of the photographer is inspired by a real-life cloud photographer from the Blue Mountains who was locally famous for selling his viewbooks, Harry Phillips. I managed to find one of his viewbooks from a Blue Mountains second hand bookstore, the same bookstore where I got my copy of this book, and his photography is really out of this world. Having the viewbook with me as I read The Service of Clouds added a whole different layer of beauty to reading it.
I couldn’t do the writing justice if I tried so here’s some of my favourite passages:
“She had read about this place; where kitchens were built at such high altitudes that clouds drifted into bread through open windows and made it rise without the use of yeast; where the clouds were always white; where the mountains were so blue that bowerbirds, stunned by concupiscence, dashed their brains against the sapphire cliffs.”
“ We stood leaning over the safety rail at Honeymoon Point as the purple silence rose beneath our feet. Then Harry Kitchings told me—‘In the six months since we met I have not seen a cloud which I have not wished to show you.’”
“In the space of a hundred miles, I have seen sargassos of white daisies floating suddenly in the middle of the green field near Springwood, and parrots hanging upside down from fern fronds in the strange tropics near Mount Wilson. At Jenolan Caves, before the attendant lit the torches, I have stood in that original darkness which existed before time. ‘Here in the Blue Mountains’, he said, ‘are united all the wonders of the world’.”
“He said he had once passed a garden near Echo Point and seen the flowers break off from their stems during a storm. They had formed a scarlet cloud of petals high above the valley, he said, moving light and swift upon the gale, filling the sky like stubborn parachutes. It pleased him to imagine, each time the winds blew, these little Hydro Majestics rising into the air. And it was as if we could see that garden growing up before us, its shoots crowding up and unwinding through the dark blue shadows in the white snow outside, like a cold Willow Pattern plate,writhing into life.”
“I believe it was the opening of this hotel, on a site chosen because it looked like somewhere else, which also caused the strange disturbance in the weather.
The Hydro Majestic was turreted and turbaned as an elephant house. It was longer than the Gare d’Orsay in Paris and in these grey winter afternoons when the clouds gathered it was not difficult to imagine that its carnivorous halls harboured some great smoking train burst forth to rush towards the pale clock face of the sun. Or, in brighter days, you might think it a vast Brighton Dancehall on a pier pillared with rock and skirted by foamy mauve and violet. The verandahs, of Italian marble, hung over the Megalong Valley so that it was impossible to stand there and look out, dizzy, towards Sensation Point, without catching on the windows the pink scent of Ferrara. The casino, purchased in Chicago, had been carried here in the deck of a boat, which had passed, as it drifted out of New York Harbour, the immigrants of Ellis Island, who waved and threw their dreams like streamers at its dome, which were incubated into vast clouds by the bright light of the Southern Cross. The dining room, where dark waiters in white gloves tiptoed by with steamy samovars, was as palmed and humid as the Raffles’. The oak billiard tables, exact copies of those at Smedley’s Matlock Bath in Derbyshire, had been crated out from England with the pages of illustrated weeklies stuffed inside their pockets. In copper tanks in the pumproom were stored the mineral waters of Baden-Baden which had curdled on their exposure to the mountain climate.”
The premise of the book is that Eureka who is a young woman living in The Blue Mountains with her mother and aunties,. There she meets and falls in love with cloud photographer Harry Kitchings.
‘In the six months since we met I have not seen a cloud which I have not wished to show you.’
The story is told to us through Eureka; Eureka uses three devices to tell the story, clouds, photography, and the landscape and landmarks of the Blue Mountains. The whole plot of the story is narrated in terms of how it relates to these three things. This makes for a totally narration driven story with a plot fragmented and a nonlinear timeline.
I cannot exaggerate how enjoyable this book was for me.
2021: I was devastated the first time I finished reading this book. It’s hands down the most enjoyable book I’ve read.
Delia Falconer brings the Blue Mountains landscape to life with her beautiful and spellbinding prose.
Every sentence and every page is an ode to the nature and landscape: a lament to the memories of that place.
It’s such a sad and heartbreaking story that many times I had to put the book down for a breather.
This book is a magical realism story of unrequited love that takes place in 1907 Katoomba. A girl (Eureka Jones) has moved to the Blue Mountains as a child with her mother so that they can go ‘where the clouds go’ and then falls in a decades long one sided love with a cloud photographer (Harry Kitchings).
When the Blue Mountains became popular as a tourist destination at the turn of the century, the tourism board focused mainly on the healing value of its air. This made Katoomba a popular destination for convalescence travel. I can vouch for the restorative value of the Blue Mountains myself, and reading the Service of Clouds, saying the sentences out loud as if they’re incantations and hearing the music in them, reminds me of the healing qualities of the place she’s writing about, so much, that flicking through the pages of the novel has become a form of convalescence for me.
“I first saw Harry Kitchings leaning from a basket which had been lowered over the Katoomba Falls. I saw a small, angular body in a dark suit with its back turned away from the sheer sandstone wall which rained water spray and yellow flowers. [..] He had come here to test his faith.”
The character of the photographer is inspired by a real-life cloud photographer from the Blue Mountains who was locally famous for selling his viewbooks, Harry Phillips. I managed to find one of his viewbooks from a Blue Mountains second hand bookstore, the same bookstore where I got my copy of this book, and his photography is really out of this world. Having the viewbook with me as I read The Service of Clouds added a whole different layer of beauty to reading it.
I couldn’t do the writing justice if I tried so here’s some of my favourite passages:
“She had read about this place; where kitchens were built at such high altitudes that clouds drifted into bread through open windows and made it rise without the use of yeast; where the clouds were always white; where the mountains were so blue that bowerbirds, stunned by concupiscence, dashed their brains against the sapphire cliffs.”
“ We stood leaning over the safety rail at Honeymoon Point as the purple silence rose beneath our feet. Then Harry Kitchings told me—‘In the six months since we met I have not seen a cloud which I have not wished to show you.’”
“In the space of a hundred miles, I have seen sargassos of white daisies floating suddenly in the middle of the green field near Springwood, and parrots hanging upside down from fern fronds in the strange tropics near Mount Wilson. At Jenolan Caves, before the attendant lit the torches, I have stood in that original darkness which existed before time. ‘Here in the Blue Mountains’, he said, ‘are united all the wonders of the world’.”
“He said he had once passed a garden near Echo Point and seen the flowers break off from their stems during a storm. They had formed a scarlet cloud of petals high above the valley, he said, moving light and swift upon the gale, filling the sky like stubborn parachutes. It pleased him to imagine, each time the winds blew, these little Hydro Majestics rising into the air. And it was as if we could see that garden growing up before us, its shoots crowding up and unwinding through the dark blue shadows in the white snow outside, like a cold Willow Pattern plate,writhing into life.”
“I believe it was the opening of this hotel, on a site chosen because it looked like somewhere else, which also caused the strange disturbance in the weather.
The Hydro Majestic was turreted and turbaned as an elephant house. It was longer than the Gare d’Orsay in Paris and in these grey winter afternoons when the clouds gathered it was not difficult to imagine that its carnivorous halls harboured some great smoking train burst forth to rush towards the pale clock face of the sun. Or, in brighter days, you might think it a vast Brighton Dancehall on a pier pillared with rock and skirted by foamy mauve and violet. The verandahs, of Italian marble, hung over the Megalong Valley so that it was impossible to stand there and look out, dizzy, towards Sensation Point, without catching on the windows the pink scent of Ferrara. The casino, purchased in Chicago, had been carried here in the deck of a boat, which had passed, as it drifted out of New York Harbour, the immigrants of Ellis Island, who waved and threw their dreams like streamers at its dome, which were incubated into vast clouds by the bright light of the Southern Cross. The dining room, where dark waiters in white gloves tiptoed by with steamy samovars, was as palmed and humid as the Raffles’. The oak billiard tables, exact copies of those at Smedley’s Matlock Bath in Derbyshire, had been crated out from England with the pages of illustrated weeklies stuffed inside their pockets. In copper tanks in the pumproom were stored the mineral waters of Baden-Baden which had curdled on their exposure to the mountain climate.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 24, 2020
‘I first saw Harry Kitchings leaning from a basket which had been lowered over the Katoomba Falls.’
Blue Mountains, Australia, 1907. A world full of promise and magic, of love and possibility. A place of rarefied air. Eureka Jones, a pharmacist’s assistant in Katoomba, watches the tourists as they travel to and fro. Eureka falls in love with Harry Kitchings, waiting of a declaration of love, and proposal of marriage. And the town watches and waits with her.
But Harry chooses to marry a widow from Sydney, and Eureka becomes an object of derision.
‘It was as if my own history had ended.’
Eureka commences work at a tuberculosis sanitorium at Wentworth Falls, where Matron Coan tells her that she has historical eyes. At first, Eureka finds this an enormous comfort but then begins to doubt the virtue of detachment. But it is this detachment which makes the novel so readable: Eureka observes the decline of Katoomba, the changes as World War I approaches, and then afterwards. Eureka does find affection, briefly, but it is her unrequited love for Harry Kitchings which is at the centre of this novel.
I found this an engrossing story: a world in transition, with the power of photography to capture memories as images. And everywhere, the clouds and the mist.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Blue Mountains, Australia, 1907. A world full of promise and magic, of love and possibility. A place of rarefied air. Eureka Jones, a pharmacist’s assistant in Katoomba, watches the tourists as they travel to and fro. Eureka falls in love with Harry Kitchings, waiting of a declaration of love, and proposal of marriage. And the town watches and waits with her.
But Harry chooses to marry a widow from Sydney, and Eureka becomes an object of derision.
‘It was as if my own history had ended.’
Eureka commences work at a tuberculosis sanitorium at Wentworth Falls, where Matron Coan tells her that she has historical eyes. At first, Eureka finds this an enormous comfort but then begins to doubt the virtue of detachment. But it is this detachment which makes the novel so readable: Eureka observes the decline of Katoomba, the changes as World War I approaches, and then afterwards. Eureka does find affection, briefly, but it is her unrequited love for Harry Kitchings which is at the centre of this novel.
I found this an engrossing story: a world in transition, with the power of photography to capture memories as images. And everywhere, the clouds and the mist.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
July 25, 2013
I am not sure how to express how perfect my reading of this book was at this particular point in time. I was holidaying in the Blue Mountains three years ago when I saw The Service of Clouds on the bookshelf of the cottage I was staying in. It intrigued me but I was reading another book at the time which I couldn't put down (the Millenium trilogy actually!). Three years later, I'm staying at the same cottage again and decided I must read it this time.
The Service of Clouds is a love letter to the Blue Mountains. The author has obviously done a huge amount of research into the area as it was in the early 20th century. I was amazed and impressed when walking down Main St, Katoomba and I saw in a shop window some historical photos from around that time. They "matched" Falconer's scenes so perfectly, so kudos to her for that feat.
I love it when a book's characters feel real, and Eureka definitely does exist, at least to me. Being set in a real (and familiar, to me) place means that the whole thing felt so true - even with the elements of magical realism that Falconer flirted with. If there's any part of Australia that can be equally both earthy and mystical, surely it's the Blue Mountains!
I am not sure if I would've enjoyed this book quite so much if I hadn't read it fireside while holidaying in Blackheath... And I can imagine that for a lot of other readers it might seem too quirky, too flowery, and with a rather bitter and pointless narrative. But I found it strong and enduring, funny and romantic, with just enough occasional bawdiness to cut through the many many references to silver and clouds and mists and spirits.
The Service of Clouds is a love letter to the Blue Mountains. The author has obviously done a huge amount of research into the area as it was in the early 20th century. I was amazed and impressed when walking down Main St, Katoomba and I saw in a shop window some historical photos from around that time. They "matched" Falconer's scenes so perfectly, so kudos to her for that feat.
I love it when a book's characters feel real, and Eureka definitely does exist, at least to me. Being set in a real (and familiar, to me) place means that the whole thing felt so true - even with the elements of magical realism that Falconer flirted with. If there's any part of Australia that can be equally both earthy and mystical, surely it's the Blue Mountains!
I am not sure if I would've enjoyed this book quite so much if I hadn't read it fireside while holidaying in Blackheath... And I can imagine that for a lot of other readers it might seem too quirky, too flowery, and with a rather bitter and pointless narrative. But I found it strong and enduring, funny and romantic, with just enough occasional bawdiness to cut through the many many references to silver and clouds and mists and spirits.
April 16, 2023
3.5 stars. An interesting, character based, well written historical fiction novel set in Katomba, NSW, Australia, mainly during the period 1907 to 1926. The narrator, Eureka Jones, a young pharmacist’s assistant, falls in love with Harry Kitchings, a man who takes photographs of clouds and the Australian Blue mountains around the Katomba area. Harry is an eccentric character who is immersed in his photographic business. Over the years he regularly disappears to Sydney to promote the photographic books he produces.
Eureka lives with her aunts and lives a lonely life. She describes the changes that occur to Katomba with more tourists coming to see the Three Sisters cliff outcrop and the waterfalls. Later on Eureka finds herself working as a nurse at the Hydro Majestic, an old hotel transformed into a sanatorium for consumptives.
There are some quirky characters living in Katomba including the charitable ladies of Katomba’s Fresh Air League, the pharmacist Mr. Medicott, and Les Curtain, the tubercular horticulturalist.
There are many beautifully crafted sentences and metaphors.
This book was shortlisted for the 1998 Miles Franklin award.
Eureka lives with her aunts and lives a lonely life. She describes the changes that occur to Katomba with more tourists coming to see the Three Sisters cliff outcrop and the waterfalls. Later on Eureka finds herself working as a nurse at the Hydro Majestic, an old hotel transformed into a sanatorium for consumptives.
There are some quirky characters living in Katomba including the charitable ladies of Katomba’s Fresh Air League, the pharmacist Mr. Medicott, and Les Curtain, the tubercular horticulturalist.
There are many beautifully crafted sentences and metaphors.
This book was shortlisted for the 1998 Miles Franklin award.
January 8, 2018
Some books are difficult to describe, they have to be experienced. The Service of Clouds is one of these. Set in the Edwardian era in Katoomba, amid a time of developments in medicine and technology, and the burgeoning tourism industry, as well as war, this story is mostly told through the "historical eyes" of Eureka Jones, whose love of photographer Harry Kitchings is recalled and composed in arrangements of memories -- moments of the past caught on glass slides. Harry captures landscapes, studies the clouds, and is a body made of air and moisture. Eureka learns to see bodies as repositories of light, as she seeks a place in the world for her own body. The motifs and metaphors of light, electricity, exposure, bodies, and clouds, shift and swirl, arranged by Eureka in 1926, describing an era as though appearing in half-tones, shadows and bright light, within a developing fluid. It is hard to speak of this book without drawing on the same language of narrative.
I didn't always know what was going on in the story, as Falconer's prose is deliberately dreamy, creating a sense of hyperaesthesia about the landscape and Eureka's heartaches and sorrows.
I didn't always know what was going on in the story, as Falconer's prose is deliberately dreamy, creating a sense of hyperaesthesia about the landscape and Eureka's heartaches and sorrows.
abandoned
February 17, 2010I might try to read this again but the first 50 pages were painful and I could not muster up the energy to turn another page. Maybe another day I will pick it up again but for now...i am calling it and putting it away.
October 1, 2021
The prose in the opening section of Delia Falconer's The Service of Clouds was so compellingly dreamy, evocative, impassioned and colourful that one might have assumed that it was written by a poet. This is the first of two novels that Falconer has written, although she has penned several short stories and and essays.
The evocative, highly descriptive and almost dreamy tone of the novel, which fits the subject matter, continues throughout, as Falconer relates a story, which spans the period between 1907 and 1926, of photography, unrequited love and the spectacular Blue Mountains around Katoomba.
The story is narrated by a young woman, Eureka Jones, who works as a pharmacist's assistant to the eccentric Mr Medlicott, while living with two elderly aunts.
The innocent and inexperienced Eureka becomes involved, and eventually infatuated, with photographer Harry Kitchings, whose passion and life's purpose is to photograph and create view books featuring clouds of all varieties.
But sadly, while Harry enjoyed Eureka's companionship and interest in his work, happy to teach her about the taking and processing of cloud photographs (the technology was still pretty cumbersome and primitive at the time), he did not respond to her with the level of romantic fascination that she ardently desired.
Falconer explains in the Acknowledgements at the end of the book that many of the events and characters in The Service of Clouds are based on historical reality.
Harry Kitchings is a fictionalised version of Blue Mountains photographer Harry Phillips, and some of the other characters, including Mr Medlicott are based on actual residents of the Blue Mountains at that time.
Falconer has thoroughly researched her subject matter, in relation to life in the Katoomba region in the early 20th century and the techniques of photography, to create a story with an impressive level of authenticity.
The most notable aspect of the novel was the style of the prose, which was haunting, romantic, tender and quietly passionate.
The plot lacked a bit of oomph, and wasn't as tight or compelling as it might have been. It seemed to drift along a bit tamely at times, and I would have preferred a little more dramatic tension.
I did quite enjoy the last section of the book, where Eureka finally experiences a sexual awakening while working in a sanatorium in the Blue Mountains.
This was a novel with an unusual narrative concept, quite well executed, a pleasant meditation that was reasonably enjoyable. 3.5 stars.
The evocative, highly descriptive and almost dreamy tone of the novel, which fits the subject matter, continues throughout, as Falconer relates a story, which spans the period between 1907 and 1926, of photography, unrequited love and the spectacular Blue Mountains around Katoomba.
The story is narrated by a young woman, Eureka Jones, who works as a pharmacist's assistant to the eccentric Mr Medlicott, while living with two elderly aunts.
The innocent and inexperienced Eureka becomes involved, and eventually infatuated, with photographer Harry Kitchings, whose passion and life's purpose is to photograph and create view books featuring clouds of all varieties.
But sadly, while Harry enjoyed Eureka's companionship and interest in his work, happy to teach her about the taking and processing of cloud photographs (the technology was still pretty cumbersome and primitive at the time), he did not respond to her with the level of romantic fascination that she ardently desired.
Falconer explains in the Acknowledgements at the end of the book that many of the events and characters in The Service of Clouds are based on historical reality.
Harry Kitchings is a fictionalised version of Blue Mountains photographer Harry Phillips, and some of the other characters, including Mr Medlicott are based on actual residents of the Blue Mountains at that time.
Falconer has thoroughly researched her subject matter, in relation to life in the Katoomba region in the early 20th century and the techniques of photography, to create a story with an impressive level of authenticity.
The most notable aspect of the novel was the style of the prose, which was haunting, romantic, tender and quietly passionate.
The plot lacked a bit of oomph, and wasn't as tight or compelling as it might have been. It seemed to drift along a bit tamely at times, and I would have preferred a little more dramatic tension.
I did quite enjoy the last section of the book, where Eureka finally experiences a sexual awakening while working in a sanatorium in the Blue Mountains.
This was a novel with an unusual narrative concept, quite well executed, a pleasant meditation that was reasonably enjoyable. 3.5 stars.
April 2, 2024
I think this book perfectly captures the melancholy and romance of its themes. Its writing style is gentle and meandering, and there are many passages that read like poetry. While it isn’t the usual style of book that I read (given that I usually go after plot-thick books), this was a really lovely change :))
May 3, 2021
I have no words. This book is an absolute experience. An experience that must be experienced for oneself. Do yourself a favour and find a copy.
April 6, 2016
The author writes like she's painting, and there are some really beautiful images throughout the book, but it almost seemed as though the characters and movement of the novel were just a prop for her to create these visuals. The story is set over years and years, but feels like it could have been weeks with how much actually happens and how much we learn about the characters (in fact I have read books set over the course of 24 hours in which I felt more of a connection to the people and events). I got to the end somewhat frustrated with the lack of substance, but also not really caring, because I had never been made to care about the characters, only the landscape they were placed in (which, to be fair, did come across beautifully!)
September 15, 2011
From about one chapter in I knew I was not going to like this book. It was flowery, over the top and fluffy language that was too descriptive and was far too unnecessary. It had as much impact on me as the TV Guide because all I can remember is something about photography and the Blue Mountains. Yet another example of an award winning book praised by everyone that failed in my eyes. Apparently if you liked The Shipping News (which I did not) then you will love this book. Take from that what you will.
December 8, 2014
I rarely give up on a book but I just got too annoyed with this one after about halfway. Some interesting characters and some lovely writing but I think she totally overdoes the magical realism thing to the point where every second sentence in unbelievable and annoying. I love Isabel Allende's magical realism but there must be a real knack to employing it and a fine line between being adding a charming element to a story and drowning it in unreality. It was also too slow to keep my attention. Too many other books waiting for my time I'm afraid!
May 1, 2021
Did not finish. I stopped after reading a whole page (!!!!) describing how this dude’s jizz “glimmered in the sunlight” after he jerked himself off on the balcony for no apparent reason (that’s a lie. there was a reason. but for my sanity I’m pretending it doesn’t exist). This whole scene wasn’t even part of the main story but by that point I found the writing too grating, and the plot so uninteresting, to muster the will to continue further.
April 8, 2020
An amateur novel by an amateur stylist too concerned with the appearance of profundity to produce any. A pale imitation of better writers. I hope Falconer improved, especially as she apparently teaches creative writing now. But after the pretentious and vacuous piece of “style over substance” — I didn’t bother to find out.
July 8, 2021
exquisite writing but the plot peters out to nothing about 100 pages in
January 1, 2016
I tried very hard to like this book. I wanted to like the story, the people. In the end, I loved words hanging in crystal moments -- but the characters drove me nuts. (Sorry)
February 25, 2022
Because of my current WIP, so many people asked me whether I’d read Delia Falconer’s The Service of Clouds (Picador Pan MacMillan 1997). I had not, but I’m so glad it was recommended to me. What an absolutely beautiful book. A novel of luminous prose, evocative imagery and language so precise and captivating that I found myself stopping to re-read many sentences, many times, to inhale their beauty.
Set in the early 1900’s in the Blue Mountains, the novel is narrated by Eureka Jones, a pharmacist’s assistant, who falls in love with photographer Harry Kitchings. Harry is mesmerised by clouds and captures many different cloud forms in a sort of photographic madness. Rather infuriatingly, he seems unaware of Eureka’s interest, or is he a bit afraid of the independence and strength she represents?
The vastness and beauty of the mountains is encapsulated in every page; the intricate and whimsical patterns of clouds in every chapter; the passion and determination of Eureka in every sentence. As the story traverses the health-giving waters of Katoomba, the harsh reality of tuberculosis, and Harry’s persistent dream of capturing the perfect clouds, we travel with Eureka as she matures from a naïve young girl to a more experienced and knowing woman who must live with the restraints of the time, the rebuff of her longings, the discovery of physical desire and the many disappointments of unrequited love.
Although there is a great plot and interesting characters, this is a novel that can be read solely for the appreciation of the language. Every line sings off the page. Every placement of words into a sentence or phrase feels magical and wondrous. If you enjoy gorgeous writing, this then debut (!) novel will blow you away.
Set in the early 1900’s in the Blue Mountains, the novel is narrated by Eureka Jones, a pharmacist’s assistant, who falls in love with photographer Harry Kitchings. Harry is mesmerised by clouds and captures many different cloud forms in a sort of photographic madness. Rather infuriatingly, he seems unaware of Eureka’s interest, or is he a bit afraid of the independence and strength she represents?
The vastness and beauty of the mountains is encapsulated in every page; the intricate and whimsical patterns of clouds in every chapter; the passion and determination of Eureka in every sentence. As the story traverses the health-giving waters of Katoomba, the harsh reality of tuberculosis, and Harry’s persistent dream of capturing the perfect clouds, we travel with Eureka as she matures from a naïve young girl to a more experienced and knowing woman who must live with the restraints of the time, the rebuff of her longings, the discovery of physical desire and the many disappointments of unrequited love.
Although there is a great plot and interesting characters, this is a novel that can be read solely for the appreciation of the language. Every line sings off the page. Every placement of words into a sentence or phrase feels magical and wondrous. If you enjoy gorgeous writing, this then debut (!) novel will blow you away.
July 3, 2019
This novel didn't do it for me. It is a story of unrequited love. But I really failed to connect with the characters in the story. The resolution of the story also seemed a bit far fetched and not in keeping with the main character.
February 5, 2022
Such a lovely surprise to enjoy a book so much, not knowing the author or having heard of the book itself. The Blue Mountains setting, photography and clouds, early 1900’s, wonderful characters - a magical mix and so beautifully written.
April 18, 2023
I tried, so hard. Got to 152 pages and just couldn't go any further.
I enjoyed it for about the first 50 pages, but the prose just weighed me down.
Life is too short to read books you don't enjoy.
I enjoyed it for about the first 50 pages, but the prose just weighed me down.
Life is too short to read books you don't enjoy.
March 18, 2018
Beautifully written and evocative novel set in katoomba.
- Kathie
- Kathie
May 21, 2018
I didn't finish this book. I just couldn't get into it.
July 12, 2018
Poetic historical fiction filled to the brim with lament, overflowing with micro stories that tug at the heart strings. Beautiful.
July 24, 2018
a struggle to finish
February 21, 2023
Hard to rate. The purple prose was actually my favourite part of the novel, 4 stars, lots for inspiration for my own novel. The storyline I could absolutely care less for.
May 1, 2025
If it’s all in my head tell me now!
March 23, 2023
a certain point at which one comes to inhabit the longing to reach the end sooner than later overwhelmingly doomed this sad and faded romance, a tale only in appearance of substance (and nothing more). and yet it evoked fond memories of the blue mountains that were undeniable; the majestic, vulnerable ghosts etched into bones of a looming precipitation of madness; the power of mountains, their capacity to produce strange passions plastered into history and frailty of man. a kind of an epidemic (the irony of it all!) of the soul where irresolvable grief seized in despair begs for the nostalgia of unremembered things.
January 5, 2011
It took me a long time to read this book, not because it's bad, but it's so dense and beautiful that it deserved my full attention. Of interest, as soon as I opened it up again, I didn't need to revisit chapters I'd already read.
My own grandfather had been a photographer during the early part of the 20th century so I was intrigued by Harry Kitchings. The research is spot on. Overall, it's a meandering kind of reflective love story, superbly written and structured.
My own grandfather had been a photographer during the early part of the 20th century so I was intrigued by Harry Kitchings. The research is spot on. Overall, it's a meandering kind of reflective love story, superbly written and structured.
March 20, 2016
Another re-read
I adore falling into this book, it's poetry, it's sad, it's painfully beautiful I adore it.
It's as close to floating in a cloud of words and emotion as a book can get
I loved this book and have been searching for it for years. I don't know if it was because I was in the blue mountains when I read it (that probably influenced my love) or if there was just something about it - but this book has stayed in the back of my mind for years. So happy to find it again.
I adore falling into this book, it's poetry, it's sad, it's painfully beautiful I adore it.
It's as close to floating in a cloud of words and emotion as a book can get
I loved this book and have been searching for it for years. I don't know if it was because I was in the blue mountains when I read it (that probably influenced my love) or if there was just something about it - but this book has stayed in the back of my mind for years. So happy to find it again.
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