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.

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.