One Amazing Thing
Ratings4
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.3
"Divakaruni is a brilliant storyteller; she illuminates the world with her artistry; and shakes the reader with her love."—Junot DiazLate 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, and The 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.
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An earthquake hits and nine people are trapped together in a passport and visa office. Water begins to rise in the room, and food is running out. To ward off panic, one person suggests that each person tell a story about “one amazing thing” from his life.
The stories that emerge are tragic and heartwrenching and powerful. All the while the people trapped in the office are telling stories, the waters continue to rise and food becomes scarce, the roof begins to fall in and no one knows if he will survive the day.
Still, the trapped people prod each other to continue to relate these stories to each other, stories that provide hope and meaning for the storyteller as well as the listener. As well as the reader of this book.
