Eating Out Again and other stories by Natalie Scott (2001)

Scott's prose is characterised by its poetic concision. It's a very particular world she portrays, tinted with disappointed intelligent women, or oblivious dullard ones, or nervously extreme uptight ones, or those who are looking out at their world through coloured glasses of one kind or another. Every now and then it is a man she depicts, and they have some of the same attributes, tending toward the fussy. Her other men are subsidiary characters who have often brought about the intensities of her pointed women through neglect, or lack of understanding. Rarely there is a positive combination too, a second relationship perhaps, where past miseries are forgotten in a flush of new possibilities. The first story here (the title story about a homeless woman) is a partner to the last of the previous volume (about a homeless man). Many in the last half of this collection are brilliantly observed zesty slices of well-heeled Australian life, occasionally brutally funny (Happy Ever After) whilst remaining subtle, otherwise poignant and moving (Totem, The Queen of Disorder). Her major fault surfaces early on with the second story and keeps appearing in at least the following eight: it is the putting of poetic flights into mundane mouths. When down to earth characters emit utterly poetic phrases all semblance of reality is lost. Other than that, and a couple of flat endings, a fine collection.

Eating Out and other stories by Natalie Scott (1995)

This is a collection of stories by a well-respected Australian writer and I continue, as I read through her oeuvre, to see why she has that reputation. To someone of my limited reading in Australian literature she belongs to a group of writers who deal with the well-heeled in the main, slightly from the inside I think, and who have a comic tendency which is overt only occasionally. The other main member of this enclave I can name is the brilliant Jessica Anderson, and perhaps the Elizabeth Harrower of Down in the City, The Catherine Wheel and The Watch Tower, but not so much The Long Prospect. I have read that Shirley Hazzard has a similar feel, and no doubt there are others. These stories all have food somewhere in their content, some only peripherally, and there are recipes for mentioned dishes placed after each piece. Many of the stories are good; two are outstanding. Plut-Nut is the clear winner, where a slightly snobbish family are hoist on their own petard at a 'meet the prospective son-in-law' dinner. The comedy is very satisfying, subtly handled and arrow-accurate. Desert Song is also stunning - a departure too in that a homeless man is the main character - some great rhythms. Scott occasionally slips a little into over-egged description, where the mood goes a bit stiff. This was self-published and is long out of print - definitely a candidate for rediscovery and a more central placing in its national literature.