Letting stories breathe /

Frank (sociology, Univ. of Calgary, Canada) contributes to the multidisciplinary field that explores the primacy of stories in human self-fashioning and that emerged in psychology (see Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct, ed. by Theodore Sarbin, CH, Oct'86; Texts of Identity, ed. by John Shotter and Kenneth Gergen, CH, Sep'89, 27-0366) and in medical anthropology (Narrative and Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing, ed. by Cheryl Mattingly and Linda Garro, CH, Oct'01, 39-1027). Brian Boyd's On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (CH, Jan'10, 47-2429) makes the most engaging, if not most plausible, claims for the indispensability of narrative. In this crowded field, this book makes room for itself through a large number of small innovations. The author is particularly original in his discussion of "dialogical interpretation," but every chapter offers shrewd observations: on storytelling practice, on how to analyze narrative, on the ways in which narratives deal with the "biographical disruption" that serious disease brings to the stories people tell themselves about their lives, and on the questions and ethical judgments embedded in stories. Frank echoes Sartre in writing that "a life that is not fully narratable is vulnerable to devaluation.. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates; researchers. K. Tololyan Wesleyan University