Imagine a book on conversational narrative that draws from the fields of linguistics, psychology, literary theory, and anthropology. Now, imagine this book as compelling as a favorite novel and as convincing as a well-designed research report. The nexus of these fields and the artful marriage of these vastly varying genres can be found in the profoundly interdisciplinary and genuinely collaborative book Living narrative. In this volume, Elinor Ochs, a linguistic anthropologist, and Lisa Capps, a developmental psychologist, speak both to those who come to narrative with literary concerns, and to those discourse-analytic minded social scientists who understand spoken, personal narrative as a means to link linguistic phenomena to development of culture and society. Through the course of the book, the authors illustrate how these literary and social concerns need not be dichotomous. Living narrative instills a simultaneous appreciation for the aesthetic and the political aspects of everyday conversational narrative.

Ochs & Capps wed these concerns by clarifying in chap. 1, “A dimensional approach to narrative,” the unique quality of their subject: spoken, conversational narrative. Two concepts shape their discussion of it and are threaded throughout all the chapters of the book. First, they argue, all narratives orient to five dimensions: (i) Tellership, or who is telling the story; (ii) Tellability, or how interesting the story is; (iii) Embeddedness, or how the narrative is situated within other stretches of text or talk; (iv) Linearity, the sequential and/or temporal ordering of events; and (v) Moral Stance, the moral values being conveyed through the telling. All narratives vary in degree along continua within each of these dimensions. The most canonical (and necessarily hypothetical) narrative artifact we can imagine would be (i) told by a single author, (ii) highly tellable (exciting), (iii) minimally embedded (as a stand-alone storybook on the shelf), (iv) highly linear, and (v) explicit in its moral stance (the moral of the story is x).

Even though no narrative would fall into these extremes, Ochs & Capps argue that traditional literary narrative tends toward these prototypical ends of the continua, whereas conversational narrative tends toward the opposite ends. By making these comparisons, the authors bring together conversations that occur within literary theory and those that are critical to social theory. Tellership, for example, is highly contested in both these arenas, in the sense that the “author” of the literary text was declared dead long ago, along with the “intentional fallacy” (Wimsatt & Beardsley 1954). For decades, literary theory has conceptualized literary narratives as always in the process of meaning anew through their embeddedness in dialogue and social context (Barthes 1977). In Ochs & Capps' conceptualization, conversational narratives are even more obviously dialogical. In terms of the dimension of tellership, a conversational narrative is often literally co-told by a narrator's listeners. As an audience nods, looks confused, interjects, or objects, conversational narrators shape their stories accordingly. Therefore, Ochs & Capps argue, conversational narratives are a critical means to understand not only the nature of narrative more broadly, but also human sociality, and the relationship of everyday talk to human development and the (de)construction of cultural norms.

Although narratives vary along the five dimensions described by Ochs & Capps, all narratives function as “a vernacular, interactional forum for ordering, explaining, and otherwise taking a position on experience” (p. 57). However (and this is the second key concept that infuses the book), narrating is also the enactment of a central paradox, a tension between two human impulses. On one side of this tension, we seek out narrative as a way to provide some order for our experiences, to our sense of the puzzling and chaotic unfolding of our lives. On the other side, we are loath to misrepresent the full detail of our own experience, and we resist paring down our stories to fit in neatly ordered narrative sequences, to cater solely to our listeners' (or society's) expectations. This is the critical tension in narrative – it is realized across all the dimensions of narrative, and realized variably, depending on the context of the telling.

After carefully laying out these dimensions and the tension that influences their variation, Ochs & Capps illustrate, with diverse and carefully chosen examples, how conversational narrative influences and is influenced by human development, interactional contingencies, institutions like family and church, and the broadest existential concerns. In chap. 2, “Becoming a narrator,” they illustrate how narrative development begins at birth and continues through the lifespan, as humans are both socialized into certain ways of telling narratives, and socialized through narrative into certain normative behaviors across the dimensions of tellership, tellability, linearity, and moral stance. In chap. 3, “Launching a narrative,” Ochs & Capps detail the interactional contingencies that can facilitate or derail attempts to launch a narrative in conversation. Again, narrative's central tension influences their discussion. Getting a narrative off the ground is always a delicate balance between “the desire to share life experience and the desire to shield those experiences from public scrutiny” (129). Chap. 4, “The unexpected turn,” centers on the feature that most clearly contributes to a narrative's tellability: the unexpected narrative event. Through examples ranging from the retellings of panic attacks at Niagara Falls, to the theft of a watch in Samoa, to dinner-table bickering between tense middle-class adults, Ochs & Capps illustrate how narrators and their co-tellers fuss with story details to shape how the unexpected event is interpreted, and they discuss how narratives provide the medium through which norms for morality and sociality are reworked collaboratively in conversation.

Chap. 5, “Experiential logic,” provides an analytic anchor for the second half of the book. Here, Ochs & Capps offer a template for understanding how narrative storylines are constructed through interaction, presenting additional narrative components and discussing structures in terms of temporal and explanatory sequences. Components that facilitate the understanding of the logic of events include setting, unexpected event, psychological/physiological response, object state change, unplanned action, attempt, and consequence. These narrative components play a double role in the construction of narrative, as both tellers and protagonists interact and respond to or recount situations. In developing logics for present and future, the linearity of a narrative establishes a coherent framework for interpreting past and future experiences.

In chap. 6, “Beyond face value,” Ochs & Capps discuss how generic story types and traditional representations of human experience influence conversational storylines. Storytellers, to varying degrees, present their story protagonists as representatives of known (stereo)types and their experiences as recognizable scenarios that have cultural and historical resonance. Narratives are seen, then, both as rhetorical ploys (disguising genuine selves) and as the very thing that guarantees our ability to have selves. “Beyond face value” means that in many ways “acts of imagination laminate the particular and the general, transporting the telling and the tellers beyond the information given” (224).

In chap. 7, “Narrative as theology,” Ochs & Capps analyze the infusion of personal narrative into prayers, and the often prayer-like quality of ordinary narratives as they “actively work out a situational theology” (250). Multiple examples, both sacred and secular, illustrate how narratives probe moral dimensions of human experience and define moral guidelines for overcoming obstacles and achieving goodness in particular communities. Narrative and prayer are portrayed as not clearly separable, but mutually informative and seeking similar ends.

Chap. 8, “Untold stories,” brings together four of the five narrative dimensions to conceptualize personal stories that are not told, or told only partially. Analyzing personal narratives (or the absence of them) from, for example, war veterans, autistic children, and toddlers articulating their first sentences, the authors frame narrative competence again as the negotiation of the tension between coherence and authenticity. The untold spaces left in narrative, they argue, are a hallmark of dynamic co-tellership. These moments of indeterminate meaning allow co-tellers to participate in narrative, much as the reader of a literary narrative is conceptualized by reader-response theorists (Iser 1993). Ochs & Capps illustrate, further, that what is left untold is grounded in morality, as teller and co-teller work together to produce not just a coherent story, but a coherent moral frame for personal memories.

Living narrative is beautifully written, balancing a need for analytic clarity with a readable, flowing style. The strengths range widely; the book is clear yet complex, interdisciplinary yet focused. The many well-chosen examples infuse it with international perspectives and a healthy cultural relativism. Summaries at the end of chaps. 1 and 2 highlight the most important concepts and indicate where they will be further discussed, and charts and tables draw relationships among terms and concepts without oversimplifying. Concepts are linked across chapters and always related to the central dimensions of narrative, the paradoxical tension that drives narration. Living narrative is itself a highly tellable tale, carefully told. As reviewers, we are pleased to co-tell it here, and to recommend it to any future co-tellers concerned with how conversational narrative functions across all human domains.