Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

 

On a flight from Hobart to Sydney a passenger, ‘a lady’, suddenly gets up from her seat and starts to walk down the aisle, pointing to particular passengers and telling each of them when she expects they will die, and the cause of death.The flight attendant who tries to stop her is given her own prediction.

In her unique way, Liane Moriarty weaves an intriguing story from this starting point. The individual characters who, mostly, logically reject their assigned predictions, are all unsettled and unnerved, as who wouldn’t be? Under the circumstances who wouldn’t try to take control of this hypothetical destiny, you know, just in case? In every alternate chapter ‘the lady’ is telling her own story.

This is so clever, and so different, and I have never read a book like it. Individual characters have their own stories but I had no trouble remembering which was which because they were all examining aspects of life pertaining to each of them and so they all stood out. I wasn’t able to guess how the mystery of the lady and her predictions was going to be solved but when it was, it made for a most satisfactory ending.

Just brilliant!

Published by Pan Macmillan