My first impressions of this book began to form in June, at the Therapeutic Conversations 3 conference, when Jeff and Vickie were gracious enough to let a few folks view the galley proofs of a work that would not actually be released by the publisher until September 9. That first tantalizing glimpse, one in which the chapter "This is not Kansas" immediately caught my eye and sparked a conversation with Jeff, now seems like an appropriate place to punctuate as a beginning to what has really evolved, for many reasons, into a love story. So how do I love this book ? Let me count the ways; that is, let me tell some stories about this still-evolving story.

My conversation with Jeff was soon followed by another with Vickie, which brought up some of my questions about an article they had written which was published in Family Process, which included drawing some distinctions between social constructionism and constructivism. I recall raising the possibility of a reciprocal determinism relating the two, based on my (still) sketchy understanding of Kellyan constructivism, and I also recall that Vickie was experiencing jet lag that seemed too burdensome to invite participation in such a weighty discussion at the time... but my curiosity was later rewarded with some e-mail that served to expand the discussion for me.

When the printed text of the book entered my life in its final form, arriving by express mail from the publisher on September 11, that feeling of expansiveness, of space allowing room for questions, for dialogue, for groping toward....perhaps not answers, as much as toward more subtly nuanced questions... ...that open, expressive space felt like an inviting home, and I had devoured my first reading of the text within a week. By the time I arrived at the California-wide Narrative Participant's conference in Malibu on September 27, I had finished a second reading, and I had really just begun to appreciate the richness, inventiveness, and essentially evocative character of a truly unique book.

Stylistically, the book is very different from anything I've ever read, and yet, at the same time, I experienced it as a thought-provoking embodiment of narrative principles and practice. It is a daring book, subverting the rhetorical conventions of text itself, and taking the reader on a walk through what might be referred to as "the narrative mindset". Itemphasizes a perspective on Narrative therapy that insists on accounting for the political, social, contextual implications of therapy at every turn, and it is another work, much like Jill Freedman and Gene Combs' Narrative therapy: The social construction of preferred realities, that is too respectful of these ideas to reduce them to a set of techniques or a "how-to-do-therapy" formula.

The stylistic difference that is most striking is how the writing itself is so consistent with the theory and practice; for example, the Narrative emphasis on locating problems outside of persons and/or relationships is illuminated by the introduction of the voice of The Problem to the textual structure. This literal embodiment of the concept of externalization serves to illuminate that process in a way that is at once useful, coherent, and understandable. Several case examples run through the text like the brightly woven threads of a multitextured quilt, serving to familiarize the reader with various concepts like deconstruction, cultural level discourses, externalization, sparkling moments (or preferred outcomes), intentionality, developing personal agency, uses and types of questions, reflecting team processes, the landscape of action and the landscape of consciousness, and thickening or "rich description" of alternative stories. Also, the chapter on couples' work is, in my opinion, probably the best articulation of a Narrative approach to working with couples that has yet found its way into print.

Another device that I found amusing, but that I believe serves as an excellent, and easily understandable, map of some of the most salient distinctions between Narrative and other forms of therapy, was a panel discussion case conference early in the book, in which "Otto Freudian", "Virginia Batesonian", and "Jerome Foucaultian", three personifications representing the psychodynamic (pathologizing), systemic(dysfunctionalizing), and social constructionist (constitutionalist) perspectives on therapy each discuss three "cases" from within the idiosyncratic lens of their own viewpoint, and critique each other's "findings". The section serves to illustrate that therapy as a value-free enterprise is an ill-fitting concept; all models inform certain pathways of investigation, which in turn provoke certain views about persons, relationships, problems, and how each informs/affects the other. Jeff and Vickie use this section to illustrate that locating problems within people is not based on some preordained statement of some higher order, but merely on the therapist's personal preference (one that is not, however, without potential consequences for the person(s) in therapy). The Narrative emphasis on respect and accountability comes through clearly in these pages.

At the Participants' conference, my having this book in my possession led to a long and thought-provoking conversation with Gerald Monk, who, along with John Winslade, Kathie Crockett, and David Epston, edited the book Narrative Therapy in Practice: The Archeology of Hope, which Jossey-Bass released in early October (it had not yet been published at the time of our conversation, and Jeff and Vickie's book was not yet available in New Zealand, which is Gerald's home). We spoke a bit about the refreshing environment being promoted by the increasing availability of quality print resources on Narrative therapy, being produced by a diversity of authors on a worldwide scale; about the increasing surge of journal articles on Narrative, social constructionism, postmodernism, and the discursive therapies in general (in articles published in the three most widely circulated family therapy journals in this calendar year, that is, Family Process, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, and Journal of Family Therapy, Michael White is far and away the most frequently cited reference); and about feeling a little more connected to a vital, growing community, partially because of these developments.

Later on, my conversation with Gerald found some reverberation in a conversation with Michael White (that was prompted by my carrying the book edited by Gerald and his colleagues around Dulwich Centre during two weeks of intensive training in November),in which we also chose to privilege and to celebrate the development of a growing body of perspectives on Narrative practice. As those perspectives and practices grow, so does the international community of Narrative, and so, hopefully, do individual Narrative therapists. I believe that it is this sense of community that helps us to remain accountable, to our clients and to each other, and to subvert any tendency to ordain Narrative as some new orthodoxy. My experience has shown me (in an almost Sullivanian demonstration of the interdetermination/interpenetration of identity in relational/community contexts) that my own growth has been inextricably tied to that wider sense of community. Given the sometimes inconsistent nature of supports at the local level this wider community has been a sustaining lifeline.

This book has proved most valuable to me not as a source of answers, but as a starting point for conversations, conversations that have enriched who I am as a therapist and as a person. I hope that growing numbers of others, locally, find the space to engage in similar dialogues at some point. In the end, I believe that course can serve to enrich us all.