Here One Moment
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4.3 • 425 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the beloved author of Big Little Lies, Apples Never Fall, and The Husband’s Secret comes a moving novel of love, marriage, family, and trying to find certainty in a fragile world.
“A riveting story so wild you don’t know how she’ll land it, and then she does, on a dime.”—Anne Lamott
Life is full of twists and turns you never see coming. But what if you did?
The plane is jam-packed. Every seat is taken. So of course the flight is delayed! Flight attendant Allegra Patel likes her job—she’s generally happy with her life, even if she can’t figure out why she hooks up with a man she barely speaks to—but today is her twenty-eighth birthday. She can think of plenty of things she’d rather be doing than placating a bunch of grumpy passengers.
There’s the well-dressed man in seat 4C who is compulsively checking his watch, desperate not to miss his eleven-year-old daughter’s musical. Further back, a mother of two is frantically trying to keep her toddler entertained and her infant son quiet. How did she ever think being a stay-at-home mom would be easier than being a lawyer? Ethan is lost in thought; he’s flying back from his first funeral. A young couple has just gotten married; she’s still wearing her wedding dress. An emergency room nurse is looking forward to traveling the world once she retires in a few years, it’s going to be so much fun! If they ever get off the tarmac. . . .
Suddenly a woman none of them know stands up. She makes predictions about how and when everyone on board will die. Some dismiss her. Others will do everything they can to make sure her prophecies do not come to pass. All of them will be forever changed.
How would you live your life if you thought you knew how it would end? Would you love who you love or try to love someone else? Would you stay married? Would you stop drinking? Would you call up your ex-best friend you haven’t spoken to in years? Would you quit your job?
Intricately plotted, with the wonderful wit Liane Moriarty has become famous for, Here One Moment brilliantly looks at friends, lovers, and family and how we manage to hold onto them in our harried modern lives.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A strange incident on an otherwise ordinary airline flight forces its passengers to take a new look at their lives in this thoughtful and entertaining novel from superstar author Liane Moriarty. After travelers board an Australian jet flying from Hobart to Sydney, a woman approaches each of them and calmly tells them how they will die and at what age. Some are bemused, others are offended or frightened, but everyone takes notice when, a few months later, her predictions start to come true. Moriarty cleverly shifts back and forth between the Death Lady sharing her life story and the ways her predictions impact others on the flight. The result is a witty, frequently moving, and always thought-provoking meditation on life and how we live it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A woman upends strangers' lives by predicting their deaths in the powerful latest from bestseller Moriarty (Apples Never Fall). Travelers aboard a delayed flight from Hobart, Australia, to Sydney are already on edge when a woman stands, points at a fellow passenger, and pronounces, "I expect catastrophic stroke. Age seventy-two." She moves down the aisle, foretelling the causes and ages of death of several more passengers before the cabin crew intervenes. She then sleeps until landing and disembarks as though nothing had happened. Most assume the "soothsayer" has mental health problems—until one of her prognostications comes true three months later. Everyone is rattled, but none more than the other passengers she hit with premonitions: a nurse apparently slated to get terminal cancer, a young mother and swim instructor whose child will supposedly drown, and starry-eyed newlyweds whose marriage (which their families look down upon) will purportedly end in "intimate partner homicide." Moriarty's meticulously plotted tale—which follows each of the doomed passengers as they reckon with their alleged fate—rivets even as it thoughtfully contemplates free will, determinism, and the value of living passionately. The exquisitely rendered characters earn readers' full investment as they contemplate how much credence to give the Damoclean sword hanging over their heads, and the pinwheeling narrative maintains near-constant tension. Moriarty has outdone herself.
Customer Reviews
New and creative story
It took so long to get me interested, but once I was interested, I could not put the book down. Parts of the descriptions were way too long-winded for me, but I ended up loving the book and could not put it down. This will make a wonderful movie.
One I’m sure I will read again
This one I truly could not put down. Wow.
Loved it!
So well done! Moriarty has a true gift.