Reviewed by Sharon Utakis, Bronx Community College, CUNY

Alexandra Georgakopoulou argues that narrative research should be broadened to include ‘snippets of talk that flouted expectations of the canon’ (vii), which she refers to as small stories, following work by Michael Bamberg. Small stories are not prototypical narratives but rather include tellings of ongoing events, future or hypothetical events, shared events, allusions to tellings, deferrals of tellings, and refusals to tell.

In Ch. 1, ‘From narrative/text to small stories/practices’ (1–29), G contextualizes her studies within the narrative turn, with a focus on the work of William Labov and his critics. She neatly summarizes important issues that arise within narrative research and demonstrates the need to expand these ideas. In this chapter, G also describes her data, which derive from two sources:  an ethnographic study of audio-recordings of a group of female adolescents in a Greek town and a collection of e-mail messages from six Greek correspondents. Throughout the book G notes similarities between these data-sets but focuses primarily on the ethnographic study.

Although Ch. 2, ‘Beyond the narrative canon: Small stories in action’ (31–60), begins with discussion of prototypically Labovian narratives, it soon turns to other types of narrative. G argues that the stories in her corpora share ‘the ongoingness of their tellings’ (37). These stories have immediacy and both build and refer to links among participants’ previous and future interactions.

In Ch. 3, ‘Narrative structure in small stories’ (61–87), G discusses the need to expand the vocabulary of narrative analysis to include sequentially based and emergent narrative structures. She focuses on three types of small stories: breaking news, projections, and shared stories.

In Ch. 4, ‘Small stories and identities’ (89–117), G discusses links between roles of a story’s telling and larger social roles. Different participants contribute to stories in different ways, and G argues that ‘specific participants over a period of time tend to assume specific roles that perform specific actions in storytelling events’ (90).

Ch. 5, ‘Positioning of self and other in small stories’ (119–46), looks at how constructions of self can be dialogical and relational. In particular, G explores how recontextualizations of assessments are used as arguments in jointly constructed stories.

In the last chapter, ‘Conclusion: Small stories as the new narrative turn’ (147–54), G ties together the ideas she has developed, stating that her aim was to show the features of small stories and how these can be related to previous narrative research and to provide ‘an identity toolkit’ to show how stories can be related to participants’ construction of self and other.

Small stories, interaction and identities is occasionally repetitive and sometimes needs more explanation of the data.  However, on the whole, the book is a compelling argument for expanding the field of narrative research to include a greater range of narrative types and contexts.