Narrative analyses routinely investigate autobiographical and interview data. This book examines narratives-in-interaction co-constructed by participants in formal mediation sessions, by asking how many of the five cases in the videotaped data display the adversarial narrative pattern pervasive within the interpersonal conflict literature, and secondly what other narrative patterns may be present, and how do they work? Focusing simultaneously at the utterance level and the macro-levels present within the larger dispute context, this book reveals situated communicative practices by which interlocutors interactively construct, resist, reproduce, and intertextually transform adversarial narratives to produce outcomes consonant with their underlying interests. In contrast to the dramaturgical model traditionally used in narrative research, this book illuminates the emergent, microgenetic character of narrative development.

Justina A Njika, University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon, in Discourse Studies 15:1 (2013):
The book addresses relevant aspects of interactive narrative genre analysis using a practical approach, thus boosting developments in narratology. Specifically, this study contributes to the subfields of conflict-talk discourse analysis and the narrative, and adds to the knowledge of the adversarial model so prevalent in conflict talk. The book is certainly a major asset to Discourse Studies readers interested in communicative analyses.