What is the author's style in Jazz by Toni Morrison?

Jazz is written in the third person past tense, with an omniscient narrator. The point of view changes from chapter to chapter, shifting from Joe, Alice Manfred, Violet, and Golden Grey, to Felice and back. It is this shifting perspective that lends the story its framework and depth. Each person's perceptions deepen the reader's understanding. By the end of the story, the simple facts outlined in the opening sentences have been strengthened and transformed into a complex web.

The structure of the novel Jazz is exactly like a jazz quintet playing riffs on a familiar theme. Morrison's structure relies heavily on her consummate power to transform stories into sagas with multiple levels of meaning. The entire plot of this novel is revealed in the first five sentences. The author proceeds to elaborate on the story, retelling it from different points of view, until almost all our assumptions about the original tale are transformed. The narrative moves freely between different time periods, and sometimes different view points, within the same chapter.