Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. One Amazing Thing. Hachette, 2010. ISBN 978-1401340995 240 pp. $23

***

Nine strangers are trapped in an immigration office in the aftermath of an earthquake, and to pass their time until rescue, share stories about their lives. The multicultural cast of characters spans age and class as well as ethnicity.

I read to the end of this, and was frustrated by what I felt was an unresolved ending, and while the descriptive writing was strong, I didn’t get a distinct voice from each character’s story. This felt really contrived, to me.