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.
Themes
The Tension Between Free Will and Destiny
In a review of Here One Moment, Kirkus asks if the novel can be seen as a “complex amalgam” of the possibilities that clairvoyance does and does not exist (“Here One Moment.” kirkusreviews.com.) The question embodies the book’s tension between agency and fate. If everything is predestined, clairvoyance is possible. If people have free will and control their destinies, then clairvoyance can’t possibly exist.
Ironically, Cherry has been a lifelong skeptic when it comes to psychic abilities. Although she grew up with a psychic grandmother and revered fortune-telling mother, she pushed back on the idea of a preordained fate and questioned her family members’ abilities. However, her predictions illustrate how both agency and fate can coexist. Her prophecies for the major characters don’t come true, but the book suggests that some of them may have if the characters didn’t act in a way to thwart their fates. Minor characters, such as Kayla Halfpenny and the elderly couple, are not so lucky. Kayla appears to take control of her own choices in order to change her destiny. However, her choices may lead to her death, suggesting that fate is inevitable.
Moriarty never definitively reveals whether fate or free will governs the world of the novel. Rather, she implies that the two coexist. Instead of answers, Moriarty offers chaos theory, which is used to study unpredictable behaviors in discrete systems, and its most famous example, the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect proposes that a small change in one part of a system can cause a large effect elsewhere. This can justify clairvoyance—people change their behavior as soon as they hear a prediction. It also suggests that predictions can change behavior without being foolproof. The novel, driven by this concept, features on its cover a butterfly hovering on water with ripples emanating from it. Two characters particularly embody the butterfly effect. Luca, the psychic whom Ethan visits, doesn’t believe anything is preordained. He can’t predict anyone’s future with 100% accuracy; as soon as he makes a prediction, people change their behavior. Similarly, Cherry calls herself an “agent of chaos” (156). Her predictions put all the major, point-of-view characters on a journey toward embracing their mortality and living their lives fully.
Moriarty resolves the tension between free will and fate in the sense that she shows how both logic and intuition have value. As the story draws to a close, Cherry puts her predictive skills and her mother’s psychic abilities on the same plane. Both might be seen as ways to access another reality and to “stumble” toward God.
The Connection Between All People
The novel shows how all people are linked. Leo’s mother turns out to be Cherry’s friend, who helps to save Cherry from her grief. Paula’s friend Stephanie is the grieving daughter of Cherry’s friends who have passed away. Harvey, though deceased, speaks through Luca to guide Ethan toward his future love, Faith. Old friends and acquaintances reemerge: Suzanne, a woman whom Cherry once predicted would leave her husband, appears to reveal Cherry’s identity. Old friends, such as Leo’s estranged friend in college, act as a lifeline for Leo when he thinks he’s facing death. Connections between people, old and new, ripple to create bigger links and impact. For example, Eve and Paula work together to create a Facebook page, one that keeps the other passengers from the plane in touch.
Some of these connections might seem too coincidental to be believable. Moriarty addresses this by exploring the link between coincidence and the paranormal: If the paranormal is valid, then why can’t all people be connected? Moriarty’s other ensemble novels such as Big Little Lies (2014) and Nine Perfect Strangers (2018) also feature circumstances that bring people together. As with these other novels, Here One Moment features a mystery, suspense, and an apparent villain driving events. In Big Little Lies, the villain is one-dimensional, a man who abuses his wife. In Nine Perfect Strangers, the villain is more nuanced, the owner of a resort who secretly doses her guests with psychedelics but is redeemed by longing for her late daughter. In Here One Moment, the villain is not a villain at all, but a psychic who proves to really be a retired actuary. In all three novels, the villains or apparent villains bring the other characters closer together. In fighting the villain, the characters bond.
Deep romantic relationships form because of prior connections. When Ned meets Cherry at the dinner party, he declares her to be the “Kronecker delta girl,” the topic in the college lecture hall when she absent-mindedly handed him a pen (424). Ethan meets Faith because she is Harvey’s cousin. Luca had channeled Harvey, telling Ethan to “Have Faith.” Upon meeting Faith, Ethan clearly hears Harvey’s voice saying, “This one, mate. Not the other one” (441). Though the novel often champions logic over the supernatural, in this case, it implies that there is room for the otherworldly, and that connection persists, even after death.
The Importance of Living Life to the Fullest
Moriarty closes the book with a quote by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Only when we understand that our time on Earth is limited can we “begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had” (497). The entire book is a meditation on this theme. The characters, in facing their deaths, embrace the book’s motto and title: “Here One Moment,” gone tomorrow. As each character moves through fear and grief, they realize they cannot dwell on their mortality and must focus on living in the present.
The novel alternates between the first-person voice of Cherry and the third-person voice of the six characters who are most deeply affected by the predictions. Of the six, Ethan, Leo, Paula, and Eve are the characters most fearful of their predicted fates—the men because the predictions are imminent; the women, because if they came true their family lives would be shattered.
These characters are all already facing emotional challenges. Ethan can’t find a woman to love because he is afraid to make the first move, while Leo is a workaholic. Paula has a history of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Eve has never had to make adult decisions. For these characters, learning to embrace life means overcoming serious personal issues. Cherry is their symbolic “seagull,” the agent of chaos who forces them to consider their mortality and make meaningful changes in their lives.
Sue and Allegra’s journeys are more superficial. Sue worries she hasn’t lived her life to the fullest when she receives her prediction of pancreatic cancer, but it only takes surviving a bad virus for her to decide to be “good at life” (432). Allegra, similarly, isn’t particularly invested in her prediction. She has navigated her life as a solid “tugboat,” and her only baggage is a bad break-up. Although depression runs in her family, Allegra has never dealt with it personally, which makes Cherry’s prediction about her—that Allegra will die by suicide—less fraught. Her storyline serves to leaven the narrative with humor and romance.
Cherry herself makes a journey. At the beginning of the novel, she is immersed in grief so deep that it triggers delirium. By the end of the novel, she has meaningful friendships and volunteer work. However, her situation is different from that of the other main characters. As the agent of chaos who disrupts the lives of her fellow passengers, she cannot change her own life the way she changed those of the other main characters, through a prediction.
For Cherry to begin living her life to the fullest again, others must act on her. The man she calls Thor induces her to release the statement saying she is not psychic. Bridie offers her love. Most important is her new friendship with Mira, who impulsively hugs Cherry at their water aerobics class and ultimately offers her a new family. As Cherry says of Mira, “[F]riends can save your life” (465).
Related Titles
By Liane Moriarty
