The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories »

In this arduous undertaking, 34 years in the making, Booker attempts to the tell the story of all stories, from Beowulf to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Referring to every genre, including folktales, films, operas and soap operas, Booker describes seven basic plots, which he contends share basic character types and present different views of the same central preoccupation. He then discusses the shift in the last 200 years to darker and less satisfactory endings, a move he deplores, preferring instead stories such as The Lord of the Rings in which all seven plots are combined in a single narrative. Booker concludes that the propensity to tell stories that conform to the basic plots is essential to human psychology. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

In laying out these archetypes, Mr. Booker - a British newspaper columnist and the founding editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye - does a nimble job of collating dozens of stories, using the 34 years he says it took him to write this volume to identify and explicate all sorts of parallels and analogies that might not occur to the casual reader. He shows us how "The Terminator" and its sequel "Judgment Day" adhere to traditional narrative tropes, moving inexorably if violently toward the ideas of rebirth and redemption. And he reminds us how the movie "E.T." embodies classic coming-of-age-story patterns: the boy hero Elliott's encounter with E.T., his alien alter ego, helps him to grow up, forces him to demonstrate leadership, and enables him to bring new harmony to his fragmented family.