The Service of Clouds

""Our lives were lived in the service of these clouds which took the forms of our desires."" So intones Eureka Jones, whose unrequited love for photographer Harry Kitchings nearly becomes her undoing in this seductively lyrical first novel (a bestseller in Australia). In 1907, the Blue Mountain town of Katoomba, Australia, welcomes tourists seeking the rarefied air. Eureka, a pharmacist's assistant, registers their daily comings and goings with a lively, perceptive eye. When Harry, the long-term object of Eureka's affections, abandons her, a girl with ""mountain-climbing legs and clouds caught in her hems,"" to marry an ordinary widow from Sydney, Eureka becomes an object of derision. She finds fulfillment, however, as a nurse's aide in a TB sanitarium where a dying patient returns her affections. As WWI casts its grim shadow, Falconer deftly charts the decline of Katoomba as well as the human relationships that flourish and falter there. Falconer admits she was inspired by the life and work of Australian photographer Harry Phillips, as well as by the resort town of Katoomba itself, and the results of her scrupulous research enhance an engrossing narrative. Acclaimed in Australia, this fine literary achievement clearly reveals its young author's ample gifts. (Apr.)