It has happened to many of us. A flight is delayed and once underway all is well. Maybe a baby cries uncontrollably, a difficult passenger needs help with her overweight suitcase and one of the flight attendants goes missing. What probably hasn't happened to many of us is what did happen on this one particular short flight. A woman no one had noticed got out of her seat and began telling passengers what they were going to die from and at what age. Not everyone took the news the same way, but there was a commonality: for some their lives did change from that day on. When a prediction comes true and then two more, what are we to think?
Excellently crafted, HERE ONE MOMENT, by Liane Moriarty, follows the lives of some of the passengers as they deal with their predictions. Told in multiple voices, we learn the effects are varied. They are a relatable group. Perfectly blended in is the voice of the woman responsible for the predictions and it is her story that is perhaps the most fascinating of all. She is complex, for certain, and often shy. But, she is articulate, witty, wry and surprising especially when she realizes what she has done.
The narrative takes on different issues. Is it better to know how much time we have left or not? If so, what would you do, if anything, to try to make changes? How much of life is pre-determined and how much control do we really have?
In my opinion, everything about this book is brilliant. It is a unique and thought-provoking story. It is so well constructed that the story draws the reader in from the very beginning and takes us on a fascinating journey until it reaches a perfect conclusion. Highly recommended.
If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?
Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.
Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.
How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.”
Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.
A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.
If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?
Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment is a brilliantly constructed tale that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, Moriarty asks profound questions in her newest I-can’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel.
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