Here One Moment

In a review of Here One Moment, Kirkus asks if the novel can be seen as a “complex amalgam” of the possibilities that clairvoyance does and does not exist (“Here One Moment.” kirkusreviews.com.) The question embodies the book’s tension between agency and fate. If everything is predestined, clairvoyance is possible. If people have free will and control their destinies, then clairvoyance can’t possibly exist.

Ironically, Cherry has been a lifelong skeptic when it comes to psychic abilities. Although she grew up with a psychic grandmother and revered fortune-telling mother, she pushed back on the idea of a preordained fate and questioned her family members’ abilities. However, her predictions illustrate how both agency and fate can coexist. Her prophecies for the major characters don’t come true, but the book suggests that some of them may have if the characters didn’t act in a way to thwart their fates. Minor characters, such as Kayla Halfpenny and the elderly couple, are not so lucky. Kayla appears to take control of her own choices in order to change her destiny. However, her choices may lead to her death, suggesting that fate is inevitable.

Moriarty never definitively reveals whether fate or free will governs the world of the novel.