Review: One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Title: One Amazing Thing
Author: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Publisher: Voice
Publication Date: February 2, 2010
Late afternoon sun sneaks through the windows of a passport and visa office in an unnamed American city. Most customers and even most office workers have come and gone, but nine people remain. A punky teenager with an unexpected gift. An upper-class Caucasian couple whose relationship is disintegrating. A young Muslim-American man struggling with the fallout of 9/11. A graduate student haunted by a question about love. An African-American ex-soldier searching for redemption. A Chinese grandmother with a secret past. And two visa office workers on the verge of an adulterous affair.
When an earthquake rips through the afternoon lull, trapping these nine characters together, their focus first jolts to their collective struggle to survive. There’s little food. The office begins to flood. Then, at a moment when the psychological and emotional stress seems nearly too much for them to bear, the young graduate student suggests that each tell a personal tale, “one amazing thing” from their lives, which they have never told anyone before. And as their surprising stories of romance, marriage, family, political upheaval, and self-discovery unfold against the urgency of their life-or-death circumstances, the novel proves the transcendent power of stories and the meaningfulness of human expression itself. From Chitra Divakaruni, author of such finely wrought, bestselling novels as Sister of My Heart, The Palace of Illusions, andThe Mistress of Spices, comes her most compelling and transporting story to date.One Amazing Thing is a passionate creation about survival–and about the reasons to survive.
The strangers being stuck in a building after an earthquake was dead on – what I didn’t know was that each of these individuals would share a story with everyone else (while they are waiting to be rescued) that explained something important about their lives.
I generally am not into a book like this – I like a flowing story, and the idea of almost ten mini stories making up the majority of this book would have put me off. Instead, I read it all in earnest.
Each of the character’s stories are written so beautifully that it was hard for me to step away. The earthquake and their survival intertwined its way through each person’s story, but the powerful tales that were told while these strangers were together definitely was the meat of the book.
The ending was a little disappointing for me, but it really is the only thing I was disappointed with.
Book Title: 8/10
Plot: 10/10
Characters: 10/10
Ending: 5/10
Overall: 40/50
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I loved One Amazing Thing!
What was your favorite story?? I loved Jiang's story — about living inside a secret, and then falling in love with the Indian guy.
I love story-within-a-story novels. I would definitely want to know the secret of the old Chinese woman.
I think if you are trapped inside a building with other people, when all of you are tired, telling a story, I think, is one of the way to keep everybody sane.