Linked Narratives
Linked stories are a literary genre where an author tells a larger story by zeroing in on the individual lives of a variety of related characters. James Joyce popularized the genre with his story collection Dubliners, but it's also seen in other books, like J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey. And as is the case with those literary classics, One Whole and Perfect Day unites the disparate lives of its characters.
Clarke brings her characters together in two contexts. First, they all live in Sydney, Australia and the surrounding region. Interestingly, the characters are physically linked within the book by the railway line that connects the suburbs to the hub of the city. The characters even pass each other's homes throughout the narration—for instance, just before Clara and Lonnie leave for the party Clara can "just make out the tip" of her parents' house's "red roof" (39.3). She may be trying to make her own way, but this geographic proximity means her family's never far.
Of course, the other link between the characters is their relationships to the Samson family, associations that get a major payoff at the end of the book when they're all united for Pop's birthday. In the book's final scene, Lily thinks:
[…] it was as if the ordinary world had mysteriously expanded, revealing all kinds of possibilities you'd never known existed or at least not for you. (42.58)
In a way, this is what happens to the world of Clarke's book through the use of linked stories: It expands it for readers and makes it real by revealing the relationships and conflicts within it. By hopping around from character to character, as their stories begin to come together in the end, we wind up with a much more vivid picture of their shared and individual lives. In weaving their stories together, the fabric of the larger story gets richer.