64 pages • 2 hours read
Liane MoriartyHere One Moment
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Cherry Lockwood
Cherry Lockwood is the daughter of a psychic who grew up to become an actuary. Her age isn’t specified, but she seems to be in her sixties. She is attractive, with shoulder-length gray hair and a good figure. She likes popular culture and references celebrities such as Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, and Brad Pitt.
Cherry has had two great loves and two marriages—one bad and one good. As the novel begins, she is mourning the recent death of not just her beloved husband, Ned Lockwood, but their two best friends, Jill and Bert. In her grief, she allows herself to become severely dehydrated before her flight from Hobart, Tasmania, where she lives, to mainland Australia. As a result, she begins calling upon her actuarial experience to name the age and cause of death for the other passengers. While a few of the predictions come true, most do not—in part because the “victims” change their ways. Several narrowly escape their fates.
Despite her psychic predictions, Cherry proves to rely on logic, not telepathy. Counterintuitively, she questions psychic phenomena, and growing up was skeptical about her mother’s ability to tell fortunes. Through her, the novel explores The Tension Between Free Will and Destiny.
Cherry’s first-person narrative is stylistically and tonally similar to the narration of Elizabeth in Moriarty’s novel What Alice Forgot (2009). Like Elizabeth, Cherry is the only first-person narrator of the story, and like Elizabeth, her voice weaves grief with humor. Moriarty, through her characters, often blends comedy with pathos. Although she navigates serious subjects—death, self-harm, divorce—there are often comedic asides and a wry perspective.
Allegra Patel
Allegra Patel is a beautiful Indian American flight attendant who is turning 28 as the novel begins. On the delayed flight from Hobart to Sydney, she receives Cherry’s last prediction: She will die of “self-harm.” Depression runs in her family, so she is somewhat alarmed and ups her self-care routines as a result.
Through Allegra, the novel suggests that one shouldn’t let past hurt get in the way of happiness. Allegra nearly ruins her relationship with Jonny because she has been burned by a past break-up and fears commitment. Through Allegra, the novel implies that one may be rewarded by taking risks: When Allegra confesses her love for Jonny, he reciprocates, and she embarks on her happy ending. This foreshadows the happy endings to come for the other characters.
Leo Vodnik
Leo is a civil engineer and a workaholic. He loves his wife, Neve, and their two children, Bridie and Oli, but he has no time for them. After Cherry predicts Leo will die in a work-related accident, Neve is desperate for him to leave his job.
Through Leo, the novel conveys a key message: Family is more important than a job that doesn’t nourish you. Over the course of the novel, Leo realizes that he loves his family more than his job and that he wishes to return to his hometown, Hobart.
Through Leo, the novel also suggests that one should behave as if they are going to die tomorrow. It implies the value of friendship. When Leo ponders having a year or less to live, he realizes he wants to reconnect with an old friend whom he has missed terribly, and does so.
Paula Binici
Paula received extensive therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as a child. Her OCD returns as she seeks swim lessons for Timmy and thinks about whether he is going to drown at age seven, as Cherry has predicted. Though Paula’s focus on Timmy’s swim lessons is seen by her family as an obsession, it ultimately saves him from drowning and fulfilling Cherry’s prediction. Through Paula, the novel suggests that one can change fate.
Ethan Chang
Ethan, a software engineer, is described as a “bespectacled hipster.” Through Ethan, the novel explores male friendship. Ethan bonds with his fellow passenger Leo. He is also mourning the death of one of his best friends, Harvey, whose disparaging comments often begin with: “Guys like us don’t.” Since guys like Ethan and Harvey don’t get into fights, Ethan can’t quite believe that he will die by assault, as Cherry has predicted, yet he becomes more aware of his surroundings as a result of the predictions.
Ethan begins the novel believing that he is a guy who doesn’t, as Harvey says. By the end, he has found his happy ending with Faith, the love of his life.
Sue O’Sullivan
Sue is a middle-aged emergency room nurse who is happily married to her travel buddy, Max. She has five adult sons and seven grandchildren. Her plan to retire at age 66 is jeopardized when Cherry predicts she will die of pancreatic cancer at that age. Through Sue, the novel conveys another key message, which is that one should embrace joy and live in the moment. After surviving a virus that she mistakes for the predicted cancer, Sue decides to live her life to the fullest.
Mae
Mae, Cherry’s mother, is seen only through Cherry’s eyes in flashbacks and memories. However, she is a strong presence in the novel. She begins telling fortunes after her husband’s death and hits the mark often enough to gain a reputation. When she tells Cherry’s fortune, everything she says comes true.
Mae is a determinist who believes you can’t change your destiny. She likes to say that “fate won’t be fought” (21), a phrase Cherry repeats as she makes her frightening predictions on the flight. The belief is Mae’s undoing, as she refuses to see a doctor for the illness that ultimately causes her early death.
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