The Service of Clouds

Download or read book The Service of Clouds written by Delia Falconer and published by Picador Australia. This book was released on 1997 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Blue Mountains 1907: Eureka Jones, a young pharmacist's assistant with "historical eyes", falls in love with Harry Kitchings, a man who photographs clouds and the shadows they cast and thinks of his work as images of the mind of God. The Service of Clouds, Australian writer Delia Falconers first novel, tells the story of their romance, which unfolds in a small town full of colorful eccentrics. It is a courtship in which the first kiss comes only after a couple of years; only after Harry leaves her will Eureka tell their story. Like a photographic print that gradually comes into focus, her account reveals the vast hole Harry's departure left in her life and in the landscape he so loved to photograph. The Service of Clouds, which owes something to Proust and Proulx alike, is superabundantly full of metaphors for the Australian land and the high sky above. This fiercely original and memorable first novel brings a place, a time. and a cast of mind vividly to life. The year the Hydro Majestic Hotel failed as a hydropathic institute Harry Kitchings fell in love with the air and stayed. It was a romantic year. Men carried thermometers and dreamed of women struck by lightning. Women carried notebooks and pressed storms in them like flowers. You could feel our love rising from the mountaintops like steam. What were we in love