64 pages • 2 hours read
Liane MoriartyHere One Moment
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Liane Moriarty
Liane Moriarty was born in Sydney, Australia in 1966. She held positions in marketing before writing her first novel as part of her master’s degree at Sydney’s Macquarie University. Her fifth novel, The Husband’s Secret, was her first #1 New York Times bestseller; her next, Big Little Lies, debuted at #1 on the list. She was the first Australian author to hold that record. Eight of her 10 novels have now achieved bestseller status. She has sold over 20 million copies of her books worldwide; they have been translated into 40 languages.
In its review of Here One Moment, the New York Times described Moriarty’s style as “a reliable bastion of breezy yet propulsive storytelling, smartly informed by relevant issues of the day” such as infertility, wellness culture, and domestic abuse (Greenblatt, Leah. “In Liane Moriarty’s Bustling New Novel, Fate Takes Flight.” The New York Times, 10 Sept. 2024). The review highlighted signatures of her style, including believable characters, humor, and her “unshowy” emotional intelligence. It pointed out that few other mainstream fiction writers explore main characters who are middle-aged or older.
In a separate interview with the New York Times, Moriarty explains the genesis of Here One Moment. Like her main character, Cherry Lockwood, she was on a delayed flight from Hobart, the capital of the Australian island-state Tasmania. She had the idea that everyone on the plane would one day die and that the data on their ages and causes of death would then be known. She then thought, “Imagine if that information was available right now” (Harris, Elizabeth. “Liane Moriarty Has Sold 20 Million Books. She Would Rather Not Talk About It.” New York Times, 10 Sept. 2024).
Moriarty’s books are ensemble-driven and feature a cast of main characters. They have been adapted as limited television series with top actors. The cast of Big Little Lies (2017) included Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley, and Zoë Kravitz; it won eight Emmy awards. The adaptation of Nine Perfect Strangers (2021) also starred Kidman, along with Melissa McCarthy, and the miniseries based on Apples Never Fall (2024) featured Annette Bening. Here One Moment is currently in development for a miniseries by Kidman’s production company.
Philosophical Context: The Butterfly Effect
Cherry references the butterfly effect in Here One Moment. The concept is based in chaos theory, which is used to study unpredictable behaviors in discrete systems. It proposes that a small change in one part of a system can have a large effect elsewhere.
Edward Lorenz, a mathematician and meteorologist, coined the term to discuss how small changes in atmospheric conditions could greatly affect the weather. He used the metaphor of a seagull, saying that one flap of a bird’s wings could change the weather. He changed the metaphor to a butterfly in a 1972 speech, asking if a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas. Lorenz didn’t use the phrase “butterfly effect” to describe his idea. Instead, the term was introduced in a text on chaos theory.
The concept of the butterfly effect has influenced popular culture. For instance, in the 1985 film Back to the Future the main character changes his unhappy family life by traveling back in time to change events that will in turn change the future. Jurassic Park (1993) explicitly mentions the theory and the 2004 science fiction film The Butterfly Effect takes both its title and premise from the idea.
Ideological Context: Psychic Powers
While Moriarty ultimately provides a rational ability for Cherry’s seemingly psychic predictions, she also gives Cherry’s mother and the character Luca genuine powers to predict the future. The book’s tension stems from the possibility of psychic abilities and a dismissal of them as coincidental. This reflects a real-life dichotomy between those who do and do not believe that psychic phenomena exist.
Surveys have shown that significant numbers of the general population believe in telepathy and precognition. Over half of the respondents in a 2018 survey reported experiences of either telepathy or precognition. Skeptics like American physicist and philosopher Sean Carroll claim that psi, defined as unexplained processes of information or energy transfer, cannot exist because it defies the laws of physics. Others, including professor Etzel Cardeña—who reviewed over 750 studies of the phenomenon—have concluded that there is a “very strong case for the existence of psi” (Taylor, Steve. “Will the Debate About Psi Ever Be Settled?” The Psychologist, 19 March 2024.)
Proponents of psi tend to attribute its possible existence to yet-unknown properties of physics. Psychology professor Daryl Bem studied the phenomenon over eight years and published his results in 2011 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Bem experimented with over 1,000 participants and found statistical evidence that humans do have psi.
A September 2020 article in Frontiers in Psychology found that while most research findings about psi are false, the phenomenon of a transfer of information between humans is possible. The problem with the studies is that if psi does exist, psi researchers and their subjects might be interacting on some level that sways the results. Like Bem, the article argues that if psi exists it means that human consciousness “can interact with its environment beyond the usual boundaries of space and time” (Rabeyron, Thomas. “Why Most Research Findings About Psi Are False.” Frontiers in Psychology vol. 11 562992, 18 Sept. 2020.)
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