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Rating: 
Summary: There cannot be many better first novels than this one.
Review: Delia Falconer has written a brilliant first novel here in The Service of Clouds. I do not think this book has received the attention it deserves. There is no great storyline but the writing and the prose are heavenly.
Living in Australia I well know the Blue Mountains, which are to the west of Sydney, and they are a place of inspiring beauty. This is reflected in Delia's writing which is wonderfully descriptive.Delia's observations of life, human nature and love are illuminating and magically alluring. This is a novel which may appeal to men as much as, if not more than, women. When I first read the blurbs I thought this might not be the book for me. I took the chance and it was. I reread The Service of Clouds recently and was even more impressed. If you like Donna Tartt's writing you will love this novel. Delia is right up there in her ability to make you feel you are living with the characters in their hearts and lives. Such is the power of the time stopping qualities of her exquisitely distilled prose.
Rating:
Summary: There cannot be many better first novels than this one.
Review: Delia Falconer has written a brilliant first novel( or any, for that matter )here in The Service of the Clouds. I do not think this book has received the attention it deserves. There is no great storyline but the writing and the prose are heavenly.
Living in Australia I well know the Blue Mountains, to the west of Sydney, and it is a place of inspiring beauty. This is more than reflected in Delia's writing. Indeed, her powers of description are more than spot on. Delia's observation of life, human nature and love are illuminating and magically alluring. This is a book which I think appeals to men as much, if not more, than women. When I first read the blurbs I thought this might not do it for me. I took the chance and it did and having reread The Service of the Clouds recently I was even more impressed. If you like Donna Tartt you will love Delia's novel. She is right up there in her ability to make you feel you are living with the characters in their hearts and homes. Such is the power of the time stopping qualities of her exquisitely distilled prose.
Rating: 
Summary: Delia Falconer's debut novel is a feast for the senses.
Review: Falconner recreates a time of leisure and hardship with a blend of romance and mystery that are gripping. Too good a book to be read at one sitting it lends itself to short or long bursts. However I read it slowly so as not to get to the end too quickly and loose the magic so well woven into this work. I have not read anything remotely as good for several years at least! (Historically accurate onto the bargain!)
Rating:
Summary: Magical historical novel
Review: Falconner recreates a time of leisure and hardship with a blend of romance and mystery that are gripping. Too good a book to be read at one sitting it lends itself to short or long bursts. However I read it slowly so as not to get to the end too quickly and loose the magic so well woven into this work. I have not read anything remotely as good for several years at least! (Historically accurate onto the bargain!)
Rating: 
Summary: In two minds
Review: I have to say I'm in two minds about this book. While I can appreciate the beauty of Falconer's writing, it seems terribly self-conscious to me. Beauty only does so much. I like books which invite you inside, whereas this novel seems continually asking you to LOOK at it, and APPRECIATE it - it feels like Falconer is always trying to impress the reader rather than just tell a story. Something about it didn't sit well - it felt contrived.Having said that, Delia Falconer does do a good job in capturing the romanticism of an era and the beauty of Katoomba (where I happen to live, funnily enough.) There is no denying she can write and she evokes some magical images in this work. I'm glad I read it, but the novel felt strangely cold and inpenetrable, written more for the writing than for the characters or the plot.
Rating:
Summary: AN ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL NOVEL
Review: SERVICE OF CLOUDS IS MOST POSITIVELY ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS I HAVE EVER READ. IT HAS THE QUALITY OF POETRY, BUT IS NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST BORING AT ANY POINT. THIS BEAUTIFUL AND EXQUISTE NOVEL IS CERTAINLY NOT GIVEN ENOUGH CREDIT, AND I KNOW FEW BOOKS THAT DESERVE IT MORE.
Rating:
Summary: Delia Falconer's debut novel is a feast for the senses.
Review: That a writer whose youth is still an issue ("Australia's most celebrated young writer") is capable of prose this lush and evocative is surely a testament to the splendid work being done by Australia's writers in all genres. Delia Falconer is an exquisite stylist. Her prose, like her characters, climbs to dazzling heights and takes risks many established writers would avoid. However, even with images and other sensory stimulants packed to bursting on every page, the novel lacks an emotional punch. Her narrator, Eureka Jones, a young woman coming of age early in this century in the magical landscape around Australia's Blue Mountains, remains frustratingly remote from the reader. Her voice is cool and precise. The object of her affection, the photographer Harry Kitchings, is a whispy, elusive figure whose various tics and eccentricities never develop a human face. The narrative is woven around both imaginary and actual events, giving the book an aura of an historical fantasy. But it is much more accomplished than that. Read it for the simple joy of witnessing a writer's love of language and image. But don't expect a story that will take your breath away.
Rating:
Summary: Delia Falconer's debut novel is a feast for the senses.
Review: That a writer whose youth is still an issue ("Australia's most celebrated young writer") is capable of prose this lush and evocative is surely a testament to the splendid work being done by Australia's writers in all genres. Delia Falconer is an exquisite stylist. Her prose, like her characters, climbs to dazzling heights and takes risks many established writers would avoid. However, even with images and other sensory stimulants packed to bursting on every page, the novel lacks an emotional punch. Her narrator, Eureka Jones, a young woman coming of age early in this century in the magical landscape around Australia's Blue Mountains, remains frustratingly remote from the reader. Her voice is cool and precise. The object of her affection, the photographer Harry Kitchings, is a whispy, elusive figure whose various tics and eccentricities never develop a human face. The narrative is woven around both imaginary and actual events, giving the book an aura of an historical fantasy. But it is much more accomplished than that. Read it for the simple joy of witnessing a writer's love of language and image. But don't expect a story that will take your breath away.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written but overwrought.
Review: This would have been better as a novella or a short story. Evocatively written, Falconer nevertheless overwhelms the reader with fanciful yet strangely cold prose. The writing is all too clearly the product of intense labour, earnestly wrought, then wrought again and again and again. Clarity and simplicity are abandoned in the pursuit of hyperbole and in the end, the book is as insubstantial as fairy floss. Falconer could do better than this. Good writing should make the heart sing with pleasure at the apt word, the well chosen single phrase. This attenuated whimsy substitutes an infatuation with words for real meaning.
Rating:
Summary: Feast for the senses
Review: To all of those intoxicated by the machine, frenzied by the rhythms of urban life and driven by the spur of modernity, Falconer proposes a cure of overwhelming literary beauty, a Dionysiac fiesta of sense and impulse. The imaginative poetic style of this outstanding first novel evokes the lavish opulence of Garcia Marquez while weaving a rare tapestry of exquisite tenderness. Falconer's eloquent tale of obsession, beauty and madness offers a tribute to the sheer beauty of metaphor and entices the reader to succumb to the author's own passion for images. Her novel honours a certain reign of the imagination and the age old literary quest to portray essentially incommunicable emotions. The Service Of Clouds evokes magnificently the mystical beauty of the Blue Mountains and charts the obsessivve tenacity of a women who grasps love and is ultimately smothered by it. For Delia Falconer, the art of writing is to create beauty as the raw material itself. A magnificent novel of haunting and persistent beauty.
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