From the days of reading fairy tales, we’ve been conditioned to mistrust the solitary old lady. Think Red Riding Hood’s grandma, Snow White’s stepmother or even Baba Yaga… You have been warned!
Which brings us to Cherry Lockwood, a nondescript elderly woman who makes no waves at all when she steps on board a busy flight from Hobart, Tasmania to Sydney. She’s just one passenger of many, keeping herself to herself, nothing to make her stand out from the crowd. Until…
Part way through the flight, Cherry stands up from her seat and begins to walk along the aisle, looking for all the world like she’s heading to the toilets. But no, instead she halts, arm outstretched, finger pointing, and proceeds to tell each of her fellow passengers the age they will die and what will cause their demise. Gulp!
There’s a baby she pegs as dying at age seven, of drowning; a 42-year-old civil engineer who will die in a work-related accident, aged 43; an emergency room nurse given months to live before succumbing to pancreatic cancer; a new bride predicted to meet her end due to intimate partner homicide before she is 26; and a flight attendant celebrating her 28th birthday who will take her own life before she turns 29. Who needs the duty free trolley when someone is serving up such devastating news?
Liane Moriarty has made her name by creating compelling ensemble pieces such as Nine Perfect Strangers, Big Little Lies and Apples Never Fall – all of which have been adapted for television and/or streaming services. Here One Moment follows that path once more as the narrative skips and shifts between Cherry and several of her fellow passengers. Bit by bit, a picture begins to emerge, but Moriarty has a fair few tricks up her sleeve before it comes into clear focus.
So, is Cherry a psychic, a fraud or just a bit deranged? The answer is revealed in teeny tiny increments which keep the pages turning at breakneck speed, Because Cherry’s back story is, well, complicated and you’ll be surprised by the many dramas in her life before she made that ill-starred plane journey.
Interspersed between Cherry’s story are the life (and death) timelines of some of the people she targeted with her predictions. And it’s when some of those predictions begin to come true that what may have seemed like a run of the mill crime novel takes on a whole different aspect. After three deaths, it’s not surprising that people Cherry seems to have condemned begin to make wholesale changes in their lives.
This is a book about fate, superstition, belief, relationships and family ties – and as each in turn comes under the microscope, you may well be prompted to stop and ponder your own existence. The well-worn cliche ‘you never know what’s around the corner, so live for today’ could have been written to describe this book.
Here One Moment is a book crying out for a screen treatment, and is being adapted to star Nicole Kidman. The twin locations of Tasmania and Sydney make for some clever contrasts, and Moriarty pulls out all the stops to create a diverse cast of characters you’d be happy to sit alongside on any plane journey – even Cherry!
In a ravel of plot threads, some were tied up a little too neatly for my liking but that’s a small quibble in the greater scheme of things – because this is one of those stories that pulls the reader in and tempts you to read one more chapter, then leaves you bereft when the final page has been turned. A cracker of a book!
Find more Antipodean reads in Craig Sisterson’s round-up of Australian crime writers to try.
Michael Joseph
Print/Kindle/iBook
£11.99
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
