During uncertain and tumultuous times, throughout the centuries, wise and frequently world-weary humans have pondered the meaning of life. The timelessly sage and eternally reverberating words of renowned English playwright and poet, William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), speak as much to us now as when he wrote them: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Act 1, Scene 5 of the play “Hamlet”).
Is there a God? Is He in control of the world and all those in it? Do we have free will to (at least partially) determine our futures and destinies? Or is everything predetermined and are we at best situated on a metaphysical conveyor belt that is irreversibly propelling us to a future that can’t be changed?
Stellar Australian author, Liane Moriarty, has certainly held up to the light some of these questions – regarding destiny, free will and whether we have the power to change the trajectory of our lives’, and thus futures – in her phenomenal new novel, Here One Moment.
The day all begins so routinely and even seeped in boredom. A flight from Hobart to Sydney has been delayed by a notably frustrating two hours, only to eventually take off to become a nightmarish and dubiously placed ‘flight from Hell’. We are told on the first page, “Later, not a single person will recall seeing the lady board the flight at Hobart Airport…Nothing about her appearance raises a red flag or even an eyebrow”.
The lady in question is elderly (yet not altogether frail) and slight, yet is the murky catalyst for lives savagely changed. At least that is what a lot of the recipients of the “Death Lady” predictions feel. For this woman boldly gets up from her seat and goes up to many of the passengers on the plane, and predicts their cause and age of death.
Now the alarm, shock and tension are supremely ramped up. For a number of the so called ‘predictions’ are hurricane-like distressing. Leo Vodnik, a workaholic engineer, husband and father, is told he will die in a workplace accident at forty-three, which if the lady is correct, means it will happen in his very near future. Leo tries to shrug the whole thing off and “grins inanely like the relaxed, easygoing guy he is not and tries to ignore the sensation of someone gently but insistently pressing an ice cube to the base of his spine”.
Sue O’Sullivan, a sixty-three year old, harried ER nurse, who is married with adult children and a grandmother, has the lady tell her she will die at sixty-six from pancreatic cancer. “She is, however, feeling the most foolish desire to run after this lady and demand another prediction, please. A nicer prediction”.
Cabin manager and flight attendant, Allegra Patel, is twenty-eight (it is her birthday) and before the flight has landed she will be given a ghastly prediction from the lady, be vomited on by an ominously recalcitrant baby and have her back badly damaged. The prediction for her is that she will die from self-harm at the age of twenty-nine. To try and alleviate this potentially figurative storm of mayhem and torment caused by the lady on this flight, “Allegra is…walking down the aisle as fast as she dares without giving the impression that this is an actual emergency, although she’s starting to wonder if it might qualify”.
Wife and mother, thirty-six year old Paula Binici, who is on the plane with her baby, Timmy, and toddler, Willow, wants no prediction given to her. She is given one and so is Willow, but it is the prediction for Timmy that causes her almost to self-combust. The lady says that Timmy will die at age seven from drowning. “Paula turns in her seat and calls out (to the lady),’That is a terrible thing to say to a mother!’. Paula thinks to herself, “What a creepy, cruel thing for someone to say about her baby. She will not let it worry her…If Timmy never goes near water he won’t drown. Simple as that. They will move to the desert. She will lock him up. For God’s sake, she doesn’t believe this kind of rubbish”.
Grieving tech company employee, (his friend, Harvey, has just died) twenty-nine year old Ethan Chang has predicted for him a death caused by assault at age thirty. Ethan lives in a Sydney apartment with his platonic housemate, Jasmine (a frozen fish heiress), and has a sizeable crush on her. Could his feelings be reciprocated? Or is his life going to be over before it has really begun?
Eve and Dom Archer-Fern are a young newly-married couple from Tasmania who get a seismic jolt when the lady predicts Eve will die at age twenty-five by intimate partner homicide.
Who is the “Death Lady”? Is she a cruel psychic, having a mental episode or just a little old lady with dementia?
Does this lady possess a gift? Should the passengers pay any heed to what she says? Do any meet their deaths as predicted? Are they just the unfortunate recipients of a great hoax? Or is the lady a sick woman who is delirious?
You will have to read Here One Moment to learn the fates of our eclectic bunch of characters and the identity and backstory of the “Death Lady”, and what occurred in her life leading up to the eventful flight.
What transpires in this highly intelligent and assiduously constructed story is the examination of how the recipients o f future death notifications deal with the cards they have been supposedly dealt, and whether they take the apparent fortune teller seriously or not. Do any decide to take matters into their own hands? Do any blindly accept their fate?
Liane ramps up the pace and tension as only she can. Does anyone actually die? Does anyone outlive their age of death predicted? How do the concepts of free will and destiny reside in the world?
Liane never disappoints the reading public, and this novel positively glows with wisdom, insights and superlatively accurate observations of the human psyche and condition.
Themes of grief, obsessive compulsive disorder, domestic abuse, work stress and family dynamics are all superbly examined and explored.
Bravo Liane! I loved every second of reading Here One Moment. You may cry in reading this sublimely written novel but you will also cheer and perhaps even reflect on the meaning of life and what it is all about, as so many have pondered before.
Five stars from me for Here One Moment.
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