Liane Moriarty review: Here One Moment, the best-selling Australian author’s new book

In Here One Moment, Liane Moriarty once again weaves a tale of survival, fate, and the human desire to control the uncontrollable. Photo / Uber Photography

In Here One Moment, Moriarty’s 10th novel, the Australian author once again sends her characters into existential chaos.

A lot of pop culture talk these days revolves around the idea of world-building and those distinctively initialled fantasy authors who do it so well (J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, N.K. Jemisin). But really, every novelist is a god, constructing universes and, on occasion, destroying them, too. We have our Old Testament types, ruthless with their creations, and the more benevolent deities, who ordain that no man is dealt more than he can handle. The Hestias of this pantheon - tenderhearted romance authors - delight in delivering their mortals to ecstasy.

So, then, what kind of Maker is Liane Moriarty? After 10 novels in 20 years, including her latest, Here One Moment, a picture emerges of an author who never shies from unleashing disasters but whose resolutions create a sense of cosmic symmetry. Her characters live in a world where their loved ones die in sudden, freakish ways (amusement park ride accident; lightning strike; falling tree). They suffer other gutting losses, too, including repeated miscarriages, cheating spouses and the deaths of their children. But they survive and rise from rock bottom, clear-eyed and less burdened. Some of them, anyway. If Moriarty writes by one commandment, it’s this: Thou Shalt Not Abuse Women. In this lone regard, she kicks it old-school: The punishment is death.

Unlike in her blockbuster Big Little Lies (and Three Wishes and The Last Anniversary), there are no obviously violent doomed men in Here One Moment. But there is a thorough exploration of free will and the human impulse to make sense of the capricious ways the universe bats us around. (If you believe in that sort of thing.)

The novel opens on a torturously delayed flight from Tasmania to Sydney, as people do what airplane passengers do - strike up or shut down conversations, throw evil glances at mothers with screaming babies, nervously devour breath mints. At least, until an unremarkable woman stands up and begins methodically, almost robotically, telling each passenger and crew member when and how they will die.

“I expect workplace accident,” the woman tells a 42-year-old civil engineer and father of two. “Age 43.”

By the time the “Death Lady” (as she will be dubbed on social media) makes her way to Paula, the exhausted mother of two recently hysterical children attempts to opt out of whatever game this maniacal clairvoyant is playing. “No, stop, I don’t want -” she cries. But it’s no use. The woman points a finger at Timmy, the infant asleep on Paula’s chest. “Drowning,” she declares. “Age 7.”

Moriarty seems to delight in conjuring up the fallout from this grey-haired agent of chaos while also exerting complete authority over her audience. Her pattern is to present readers with a puzzle or two, which they will piece together, chapter by chapter, only to have the whole thing swept off the table with one solid twist.

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty.

More than 20 million copies of Moriarty’s novels have sold, and three of her books (so far) have been turned into splashy television series with A-list actors (Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers and Apples Never Fall). It’s difficult for these adaptations to fully capture the source material, given the precision with which Moriarty describes the interior lives of modern mortals and her virtuosity in shifting among her characters’ divergent perspectives and personalities.

In Here One Moment, chapters of omniscient narration land us into the overactive cerebral cortexes of a variety of people, including that mother, Paula, who doesn’t believe the prediction about her sweet baby boy - that would be ridiculous! - yet secretly enrols him in six swimming lessons a week; Allegra, a 28-year-old flight attendant, whose supposedly imminent death from “self-harm” would seem unlikely if she didn’t incur a debilitating back injury on the infamous flight from hell; and 63-year-old Sue, a nurse and grandmother who would much prefer to spend her 66th year newly retired and snapping a photo of herself pretending to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa instead of dying from pancreatic cancer. Interleaving these stories is the first-person account of the Death Lady herself, who’s as mystified as anyone by her behaviour on that plane.

Moriarty completists might have a hint of what’s to come: Parents with marital troubles tend to work things out; lost souls finally comprehend what really matters; and, of course, abusers get their merciless comeuppance.

But even Moriarty’s depictions of abuse - her most unforgivable sin - have evolved over time. While her earlier work threw the book at brutal men with no impulse control, her more recent novels feature characters who strive so vigorously to avoid harming their loved ones they imperil their relationships all the same. Stan Delaney, the patriarch in Apples Never Fall, refuses to be like his violent father, so he walks away without explanation - sometimes disappearing for days, once abandoning his family on a six-lane highway - when he feels his temper igniting. In Here One Moment, the Death Lady tells 20-year-old newlywed Eve she will die of “intimate partner homicide”. Eve isn’t worried. She knows her high school sweetheart, Dom, would never hurt her. But Dom has a history of sleepwalking and becomes so convinced he might do something terrible that he frets obsessively and insists on handcuffing himself to the bed at night.

In the end, the puzzle - will the predictions come true or won’t they? - becomes less interesting than the myriad ways people react when confronted with their ephemerality. Determinists throw in the towel, accepting their fates without argument; others flaunt their free will, driven to manifest the life of their dreams.

Sue, the grandmother, laments to a friend that she’s worried she spent the past 40 years on autopilot. “I’m always thinking, ‘Okay, I’ll just get through this next thing, then I’ll start living’,” she says. “Once I’m married, once the baby is born, once this kid sleeps through the night, once this one is at school, once they’ve all finished school, once Christmas is done, once Easter is done, you know how it goes. The hamster wheel.”

In moments of such stark and relatable humanity, a reader may find themselves pondering their own mortal coil. Can we escape the burden of monotony? Will Sue? That’s up to her creator. Most novels wrap up predictably or peter out or go off the rails. But not Moriarty’s. Her conclusions aren’t obvious, and they don’t necessarily give readers what they want, but they do induce a sense of sanguinity - an exhale of relief that the world makes sense. Or Moriarty’s world, anyway.

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty (Macmillan, RRP$34.99) is available now.