The proof copy of Liane Moriarty’s latest novel screams ‘No 1 International Bestselling author’ on the front cover and ‘The Biggest Book of 2024’ on the back. Ordinarily, publicist puffery is simply that – hyperbole – but when it’s a Moriarty book you know that the comments are more likely to be justified.
Moriarty is indeed a popular writer in the simplest definition of that word: she appeals to the masses, and while her works will never win a literary award in all the country, a number have been made into television series that have garnered another stream of audience (see Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers and Apples Never Fall). Her books have sold over 20 million copies worldwide (three million here in Australia and New Zealand).
These are impressive statistics indeed when the average (literary) writer struggles to move units in a highly competitive, overheated market. It’s easy to be snooty and deride her for being so populist and pandering to an airport-reading crowd, but Moriarty deserves respect for carving out a niche where she reigns supreme.
So what’s her secret? The author has a formula that she adheres to in each of her books. Her words are deliberately easy to read, without pretension or highfalutin language. She does not spend inordinate amounts of time with setting or description – intricate world-building is eschewed. What she cares about – what her readers expect – are detailed character portraits of a disparate group of people thrown together and a propulsive plot with twists and cliffhangers.
Her latest book cleaves closely to this blueprint. We all know how the second part of its title concludes: Here One Moment is followed by, of course, “gone the next”, and that’s essentially what this novel explores: the limited time we each have on this blue Earth and how we would spend it if we knew exactly when and how our time will end?
So, in true Moriarty form, she introduces a simple idea and follows it as it splinters off in multifarious trajectories.
A nondescript, older lady boards a plane at Hobart Airport en route to Sydney and proceeds to predict the causes of death of her fellow passengers, as well as the ages when they will perish. Some diagnoses are old-age related, like cancers and organ failure, but others are more disturbing: intimate partner violence, assault and self-harm. Some have long life spans envisioned; others are forecast to die at their next birthday.
Naturally, the passengers are all agog at her audacity. Some brush off her predictions as the ravings of a madwoman, yet some take the words as truth and try to mitigate the futuristic roadmap envisioned for them and their loved ones. Reactions are mixed, and range from alarmed and frightened to dismissive and scornful.
Here One Day asks the simple question: Can fate be fought?
The narrative is divided into the first-person narrative of the seeming soothsayer, Cherry, and the third-person viewpoints of a number of the passengers. Moriarty strings us along the entire time, playing with the reader, as we, alongside these poor souls, try and figure out whether Cherry is a malicious charlatan or if indeed she actually possesses the uncanny ability to read the future.
Moriarty is good at creating sympathetic portraits of her characters; it’s what she does best, and the novel tracks the post-flight lives of those touched by Cherry’s morbid fortune telling. There’s the overwrought mother who enrols her son into three swim schools before he can even walk, to try and prevent his drowning prediction; the civil engineer who decides to work from home more to ward off the possibility of a workplace accident at any building site he oversees; the seemingly healthy retiree who takes a battery of tests to monitor her physical condition; and several others who rail against Cherry’s premonitions in a fight of free will against determinism.
Read: Book review: Everyone on Mars, Larry Buttrose
Here One Moment succeeds in making you ponder about your own life, and how you would change the course of it if you knew you only had months or years left. It brings to mind Mary Oliver’s famous poetic lines:
‘Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your own wild and precious life?’
Here’s my prediction: it will be as wildly successful as Moriarty’s previous books and, yes, will most likely be turned into another TV series.
Here One Moment, Liane Moriarty
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 9781760785031
Format: paperback
Price: $34.99
Publication Date: 29 August 2024
The author will be in conversation with Melbourne author Sally Hepworth at Melbourne’s Capitol Theatre on the day of the book’s release, Thursday 29 August 2024. Tickets.
