The Fluent Sculpture of Time

by Jonathan Decoteau

What if science conquered death and anyone who ever lived could be resurrected for a normal life? What if immortality became as much a constitutional right as the freedom of speech?

In The Fluent Sculpture of Time, Fara O’Malley is a fifteen-year-old American girl from the twenty-seventh century facing just this issue. Her grandfather, Everett, a poet, succumbs to Alzheimer’s Disease. The only death surgery. The decision of whether or not to kill and resurrect Everett leads to moral questions about life and the afterlife. Everett wishes to join his late wife in a natural death and believes in Heaven. Fara’s mom wants to keep her father alive indefinitely. When Everett is resurrected, Fara must come to terms with the fact that he is not the same man. His memories are intact, but his emotions are flat. Using the language of poetry, Fara must teach Everett how to be human again and how to love. In return, Everett must teach Fara how to say goodbye when death proves too powerful to ever become fully extinct.

293 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 17, 2011

About the author

Jonathan Adam DeCoteau lives near a cemetery and indicates that has made all the difference in his writing.

You develop a strange sense of peace and a desire to pay homage to those whove come before, he states. It does make a difference to wake up in the morning, look out the window, and see a gravesite staring back at you. Sure, it may not be as cheery as sunshine on the windowpane, but its a keen reminder that our time here is limited and that we must tell our stories lest the world forgets.

Most of Jonathans work feels haunted by the need to remember and to understand. As an English teacher, Jonathan edited an award-winning student publication "The Glory and The Dream," which contained the poetry and fiction of writers during the World War II period to the present.

Its amazing the way those kids during perceived the last centurys greatest war. They had a different way of looking at politics and at reality.

Remembrance also made its way into Jonathans first collection of stories, "Sing of The High Country," a work haunted by the bloody sins of New Englands past, vividly painted upon the page.

I just wanted to indicate that slavery, plantationsthese did exist, in the North just as in the South, even if not in the same abundance. Slavery, racism, oppressionthese are national issues, not regional ones. Theyre part of the human story and they need to be told.

"Sing of the High Country" went on to win The 2005 Eric Hoffer Book Award in General Fiction and place as finalist in The 2004 The Foreword Magazine Book of the Year competition. Jonathans work has also appeared in Readers Quarterly.

The macabre does have its rewards, however. Jonathan wrote "The Naked Earth" after reading about Nazi atrocities in Simon Wiesenthals The Sunflower.

In class one day, I asked students if Karl, a Nazi officer, would truly feel sorry if he werent on deaths doorstep, but had to live an agonizingly long life knowing that he killed the innocent. Would a life of repentance change anything? The bell rang and the students left. But the question remained. Thats when I discovered Evan Khein Al-Mohummad, who took me on a journey to uncover the limits of human atrocity and redemption.
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