Introduction to Rob Woodard'
What Love Is

Burning Shore Reviews, July 2008

By Matthew Firth

This is a brave and bold novel - but not in the usual ballsy, bravado sort of way. WHAT LOVE IS is bold and brave because Rob Woodard rips open his chest, tears out his heart and lays it on the table, fully exposing it for all to see and to revel in its inner workings, passions and vulnerabilities. To do this takes courage. And Woodard has courage in abundance.

I've never met Woodard, but I know his fiction and I know his publishing endeavours. I listed his first novel HEAPING STONES as one of the best books of 2006 in a column I wrote for the Ottawa XPress. I have praised books by Tony O'Neill and Dan Fante that Woodard has published with his Burning Shore Press. Woodard is an integral part of a new cast of international authors who write honestly and directly, putting experience and emotion at the centre of their work. This cast also includes the aforementioned O'Neill, Fante - as well as others, such as Mark SaFranko (USA), Chris Walter (Canada) and Laura Hird (UK). Woodard, like these others, shuns metaphor and literary device in favour of a no-bullshit slant and style that is the perfect antidote for our media-sozzled and star-dumbstruck times that are awash in falseness and contrivance. Woodard sees past the fetishized and shallow present, plumbing the depths of the human heart in WHAT LOVE IS, a visceral, essential contemporary novel that strives to understand how one human treats and mistreats another.

WHAT LOVE IS is also a simple story, a familiar story. At its core it's boy meets girl. Spanning many years, it's a tale of romantic obsession - of the man, Rob, and his love, longing and lusting for the girl, Maggie. It's ups and downs. It's near misses, desperate grabs, physical love and mental fuck-ups. It's life in all its ugly beauty. Sex is central. The narrator confesses early on: "she is the key to everything: she connects my dick to my soul and my soul to reality." Rage and frustration appear regularly. Rob spews: "YOU FUCKING RAGING LOSER CUNT!" He tries to chase away madness by listening to the Sex Pistols and drinking himself into oblivion. No matter - Maggie and her bitter hold on his reality creeps back into his life. She is his addiction and he joneses badly when he cannot have her.

Maggie is not the perfect female beauty, nor is she fault-free. She is not the idealized woman so often portrayed in mainstream stories. She is described as plump and not physically flawless. She demonstrates confusion, rolling from man to man, often at the same time, pulling Rob along and then knocking him down a notch right when he thinks he's got her in his clutches. She is complex and alluring. In the end, she exposes a damaged side that reveals her to be a very human character.

So the novel is not just about a boy and his desire to fuck a girl. It's about what drives the characters and what underscores their character. Again, Woodard writes of the depth of human experience and emotion, not the calm surface waters. But he does so in a direct and accessible manner that draws the reader in and takes them along on a wild ride. I'll leave it there, then, and let Woodard do just that - take you in and show you his world of mad, lustful and honest obsession. Enjoy.

Matthew Firth
July, 2008
Ottawa, Canada

MATTHEW FIRTH is the author of the short story collections Fresh Meat, Can You Take Me There, Now, and Suburban Pornography. He is also the editor of the Front & Center, a literary journal, and the publisher of Black Bile Press. He was born and raised in Hamiliton, Ontario, Canada and currently lives in Ottawa, Canada with his wife and two children.