 First edition | |
| Author | Susan Hill |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 5 Nov 1998 [1] [2] |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 288 [1] |
| ISBN | 1-856-19279-2 |
The Service of Clouds, is a novel by the English author Susan Hill, first published in 1998 by Chatto & Windus. It takes it title from a passage in John Ruskin describing the supremacy of cloud in modern landscape painting. [3]
Susan Hill writes that "it wasn't triggered by an obsession or a childhood memory. It just grew quietly in my head" However, when pressed, she reveals some of the plot: "It's a story of growing up, of learning to fit in, of breaking away from home. It concerns obsessive parental love - and its opposite. The central character is a woman who lives through and for her son's life." [4]
The narrative is split between the stories of Flora and her son Molloy but the narratives do not overlap. Flora has contends with the death of her own father, the difficult relationship with her mother May, and then birth of her sister Olga who her mother May dotes on. Flora becomes independent of her family and becomes the governess for Hugh, a six-year-old boy who is then killed in a car accident. Flora's life is accompanied by a series of bereavements and disappointments. Her son also mirrors her experiences of death as he becomes a doctor. The greatest regret is that he was unable to be there at the death of his mother Flora. His wife Elizabeth is also beset by illness which he is determined to ameliorate...
Anita Brookner was an English novelist and art historian. She was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge from 1967 to 1968 and was the first woman to hold this visiting professorship. She was awarded the 1984 Booker–McConnell Prize for her novel Hotel du Lac.
Jean Stafford was an American short story writer and novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford in 1970.
Hotel du Lac is a 1984 novel by English writer Anita Brookner. It centres on Edith Hope, a romance novelist who is staying in a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva. There she meets other English visitors, including Mrs Pusey, Mrs Pusey's daughter Jennifer, and an attractive middle-aged man, Mr Neville.
The Pure Weight of the Heart is Antonella Gambotto-Burke's first novel and third book. It peaked at number six on The Sydney Morning Herald bestseller list. Published by Orion Publishing in London in 1998, it was translated into German by Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (DTV) in 2000. Tatler's Book of the Month, The Pure Weight of the Heart reflected a number of themes found in The Astronomer, a short story Gambotto-Burke wrote in 1989. In its section 'What to say about the book', Tatler suggested: "Funny how the most odious characters in print are always so much worse in real life."
Every Day is Mother's Day is the first novel by British author Hilary Mantel, published in 1985 by Chatto and Windus. It was inspired in part by Hilary Mantel's own experiences as a social work assistant at a geriatric hospital which involved visits to patients in the community and access to case notes, the loss of which play an important part in the novel.
Air and Angels is a novel by English author Susan Hill her first for 16 years. It was first published in 1991 by Sinclair Stevenson and since republished by Vintage Books in 1999 who have also made it available as an ebook. It is said to contain some of her finest writing. The title is taken from a poem by Jon Donne.
The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read is a short story collection by British writer Susan Hill published in 2003 by Chatto & Windus (hardback) and the following year in paperback by Vintage Books. It "received long and favourable reviews in The Guardian, The Spectator, The Sunday Times and The Times Literary Supplement.
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How to Be Both is a 2014 novel by Scottish author Ali Smith, first published by Hamish Hamilton. It was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize and the 2015 Folio Prize. It won the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize, the Novel Award in the 2014 Costa Book Awards and the 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.
The Queen of the Tambourine is a 1991 epistolary novel by English author Jane Gardam; it won the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel that year.
From the Heart, is a coming of age - and coming out novel by Susan Hill, published in March 2017 by Chatto and Windus.
The Name of the World is a novel by Denis Johnson published in 2000 by HarperCollins.
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Incidents in the Rue Laugier is a novel by Anita Brookner, published in 1995 by Jonathan Cape in the UK and by Random House in the USA. In 1996 Penguin Books brought out the paperback edition.
Tracy Deonn is an American author. Her debut novel Legendborn (2020) was a New York Times bestseller and received a Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe Award for New Talent and the 2021 Ignyte Award for Best Young Adult Novel. The sequel novel Bloodmarked was published in 2022 and also became a New York Times bestseller.
The Red House was published in 2012 by English author Mark Haddon, set in Herefordshire in 2010.
Have The Men Had Enough? is a 1989 novel by English writer Margaret Forster about the dementia of octogenarian 'grandma', alternating between the perspectives of Jenny (daughter-in-law) and Hannah (granddaughter).