Writing career
Scott began writing her first novel, Fading, My Parmacheene Belle, while at Brown University.[6] It was published in 1987. Writing in The New York Times, Nancy Ramsey called it a "remarkably inventive first novel" that was moving and wise.[7] In a separate review in The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt criticized the novel's plot, but praised the "mad eloquence" of its prose.[8]
In 1988, Scott's second novel, The Closest Possible Union, was published. Narrated by a teenaged boy, it tells the story of the violent voyage of a slave ship. Publishers Weekly declared that the "Kafkaesque" story "demonstrates conclusively that modern literature has a major new voice".[9] However, the author Robert Houston found the novel disappointing, writing in The New York Times that it suffered from a disconnect between its language and its material.[10]
Scott's third novel, Arrogance, appeared in 1990 to mixed reviews. A fragmented, fictional account inspired by the life of Austrian artist Egon Schiele, it was criticized in Publishers Weekly as reading like "an innovative treatise".[11] Writing in The New York Times, the author Scott Bradfield also classified the work as "more…a treatise than a novel", although he praised its "vivid" use of "sensuous, provocative" material.[12] However, Entertainment Weekly gave the novel an 'A' grade,[13] and, writing in The Washington Post, J. D. McClatchy called it "a convincing portrait of tortured artistic genius and a dazzling literary performance".[14]
In 1994, Scott released a collection of stories, Various Antidotes. This was followed by another novel, The Manikin (1996), a gothic story set in western New York. In the Los Angeles Times, Anna Mundow praised the novel's "feverish, hermetically sealed atmosphere", although she criticized its portrayal of its characters.[15] Calling it "richly atmospheric", Kirkus Reviews declared that the novel "splendidly reinforces Scott's reputation as an original and imaginative writer".[16] In The New York Times, Peter Prescott compared Scott's prose to the Metamorphoses of Ovid.[17] The novel went on to be a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.[18]
In 2000, Scott published her fifth novel, Make Believe. She then took a sabbatical to live in Florence, Italy, where she conducted research and began work on novels set in Italy.[19] These were Tourmaline (2002) and Liberation (2005). Another collection of short stories, Everybody Loves Somebody, was published in 2006.
Scott's eighth novel, Follow Me, appeared in 2009. Kirkus Reviews praised its "luminous prose" and "mythic" main character,[20] while Publishers Weekly admired its "retelling of the archetypal American journey from a female perspective".[21] It was followed by another novel, De Potter's Grand Tour (2014), which was inspired by the story of Scott's great-grandfather, Armand de Potter, and includes photos and other materials from Scott's family archives.[22] In Library Journal, Neil Hollands called it "a fascinating tale of the dark side of the rags-to-riches story".[23]
Scott's tenth novel, Careers for Women, appeared in 2017. A story collection, Excuse Me While I Disappear, appeared in 2021.
Form
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 In this video from 2017, Scott reads from her novel, Careers for Women. (3 mins) |
Scott has published fiction (both novels and short stories) and nonfiction (essays and book reviews). She is best known for fiction of lyrical prose that explores a wide range of subjects and employs a variety of literary techniques. The scholar Anne-Laure Tissut has characterized Scott's writing as displaying "a fascination for the diversity of the world and an awareness of the wealth of literary devices".[24] Among the devices Scott has employed are magical realism[25] and unreliable narration,[26] and she is noted for her contributions to what the scholar Michael Lackey has called "biofiction", or biographical fiction, a form of literature that "names its protagonist after an actual historical figure" without being bound to the scholarly conventions of history or biography.[27] Scott has done this by crafting fictions centered on historical figures ranging from Antonie van Leeuwenhoek to Egon Schiele to her own ancestors.
Themes
Scott's work is thematically diverse. Some scholarly attention has been paid to the feminist perspective in Scott's novels and their portrayal of women who navigate male-dominated arenas.[28] Critics have also focused on Scott's preoccupation with all facets of creativity, including the psychology of artists, most obviously explored in Arrogance,[14] and the choices made in the process of realizing a personal vision.[26]
Influences
In interviews, Scott has pointed to the influence of William Faulkner, Samuel Beckett, Maureen Howard, and John Hawkes on her work.[6][4]
