Short stories about stroke: Interviews and narrative production

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Abstract
The idea of narrative is an appealing one, which emphasises the creativity of the human capacity to communicate, engage and order. Illness narratives in particular have been conceptualised as providing the opportunity to make sense of suffering, setting a physical experience in a social and moral context. Invitations to participate in open-ended interviews may be conceptualised as invitations to narrate, but it is not clear whether the material elicited in this way necessarily constitutes narratives. This paper presents selected examples from an interview-based study conducted with people in London, UK and Riga, Latvia one year after having a stroke. In the case of two examples, the interviews yielded clearly identifiable 'narratives', but the other two appear to be 'failed' narratives. In one of these interviews communication problems impeded the production of a coherent narrative, while in the other the interviewee used a number of strategies to resist the request to tell a story. By problematising refusals to narrate, the paper suggests that issues of context and agency need to be addressed in the analysis of illness narratives.