Review: Why Stories Work by Somdev Chatterjee

Title: Why Stories Work: The Evolutionary and Cognitive Roots of the Power of Narrative
Author: Somdev Chatterjee
Publication: April 29, 2023 by Notion Press
Genre: Nonfiction, Science
Find it on: Amazon
Rating: 3.5/5★

For millions of years our ancestors survived on the marginal niches of the environment while the bigger beasts reigned on Earth. They were a bunch of weak, defenseless, and unimportant creatures serving out their time before being swept into evolution’s dustbin. Then, sometime between 200,000 and 50,000 years ago, they embarked on a journey unprecedented in the history of life on the planet – one that took them from being footnotes in the book of Life to the dominant species of the planet. What secret superpower propelled this incredible charge?

Tool use? Language? These were important, of course. But there was something else.

We learned to tell stories.

Drawing on insights from the evolutionary and social sciences, psychology, and the cognitive sciences, the author shows how the ability to tell stories has been at the foundation of our success as a species. They help us pass on crucial knowledge, imagine possible futures and co-operate flexibly in large groups. But the importance of stories in our lives goes deeper. It isn’t only that stories help us live. Recent discoveries in the cognitive sciences suggest that stories could be the most fundamental form in which we experience our lives : we live in stories every moment of our lives. That is why they have such power over us.

If you have ever been captivated by a novel, film, or television show, and wondered why the storyteller is able to weave such magic (not merely how they do it); if you want to know why storytelling makes us human, and why to be human is necessarily to be a storyteller, then this book is for you.

Why Stories Work by Somdev Chatterjee is a book where one of the questions that’s being asked is why have stories had such an impact on humans from prehistoric times until know. Any book that has stories as it’s front and center will always deeply speak to me and although not everything about this particular title worked for me, personally, I still found it to be an impressive work of nonfiction.

This really was a very interesting book to read and for such a short one (112 pages) it still contained a lot of content which I thought was remarklable on its own already. It also had some illustrations and I really liked those as well. I had initially never really thought about the reaons of how and why storytelling began. One of those reasons was simply to survive the dangers of the early human world, which if you think about it does make a lot of sense. I would love to read more about this particular concept because it’s highly fascinating.

Now the reason why I didn’t rate this book higher was because some of the things stated in the book went a little over my head. I’d also like to state that I know this is very much a “me” problem than it is a problem of this particular book or author. It just contained a lot of complicated words so I had to really keep my attention to the book to make sure I could take it all in, if that makes sense? But I also couldn’t help from my mind drifting off when some of the chapters were a little difficult to read. Again, this is just my personally thoughts and I’m sure other people might end up enjoying this work more in that way.

Nontheless, I did think most of the book was fascinating and I do want to learn more about stories in an evolutionary context because I feel like there’s so much more to learn. I think I wouldn’t recommend this book to newbies to this concept because they might struggle a bit just like I did but if you read a lot of scientific kind of books then I would definitely say go for it. You will learn a lot and it will most definitely be a worthwhile read.

About the author:

A writer, film maker, and teacher, Somdev Chatterjee teaches Direction and Producing for Electronic Media at the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute, Kolkata, India. He has written hundreds of hours of fiction content for television, and directed documentaries for various international television channels. He is interested in the relationship between stories and other aspects of human experience.

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