"Later, not a single person will recall seeing the lady board the flight at Hobart Airport." So begins Liane Moriarty's intriguing Here One Moment. By the time the passengers disembark, they will all have been deeply unsettled by the woman later deemed "the Death Lady."
After everyone settles in for the flight to Sydney, Australia, a silver-haired woman steps into the aisle and walks the length of the plane, pointing at each passenger and announcing their cause and age of death, e.g. "I expect pancreatic cancer. Age sixty-six." Even children are not spared from her awful predictions; the woman points to a baby sleeping in his mother's arms and proclaims, "Drowning... Age seven." Occasionally she adds, "Fate won't be fought."
Some on board dismiss the woman's declarations, but after the flight, some passengers become obsessed with preventing her predictions from coming true. The anxiety intensifies when reports start hitting the news that a few passengers have died--from the exact causes the Death Lady "expected."
Moriarty's meditation on fate, free will, and mortality, told from the points of view of the Death Lady and a number of passengers, asks: If we could know when we'll die, how would we spend our remaining time? Would we stress out and try to fight the inevitable, or would we make the most of every day and absorb as much joy as possible? The novel also asks whether psychic powers could be real. Moriarty (Nine Perfect Strangers) handles these big questions and more in an absorbing way, without pushing for easy answers but instead reminding readers of what's important in life and that happiness can be a choice. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, reviewer and freelance editor at The Edit Ninja