Towards Mosaic Wholeness: Jenifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad as a Composite Novel

Abstract

Jenifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) has raised much debate about its genre. Some critics see the book as a traditional novel, while others see it as a short story collection. Guided by Maggie Dunn and Ann Morris's The Composite Novel: The Short Story Cycle in Transition (1995), the aim of the study is to prove that Egan's book belongs to the genre of the 'composite novel'. The composite novel is made up of fragmented individual stories, but they have unifying ties that eventually lead to their narrative wholeness. A close examination of Egan's book reveals how the genre of the book is closely connected to its main thematic concern: achieving narrative wholeness out of fragmented stories through the characters' nostalgia