Heaping Stones

Heaping Stones, Rob Woodard, Burning Shore Press, 2005

Set in present-day Long Beach, CA, this is the story of Rob, in his late thirties, and still an unpublished writer. He is having a hard time dealing with the abrupt walking-out of Maggie, his wife, several months previously. Rob seems locked into a cycle of self-hatred and drunken rages.

Veronica has a free and open sexual nature which seems to make up for a self-esteem level of zero. It is as if Veronica feels that her only worth as a human being is based on what is between her legs. After a three-day binge of sex, sleeping together and more self-loathing on Rob's part, he finally lets it all out, and physically throws Veronica out of his apartment.

Rob busses tables at a local restaurant to pay the bills. A fellow employee is Rachael, a vivacious recent high school graduate with a sweet and innocent nature. They engage in some playful flirting during work hours, which gets their fellow employees to gossiping. Even better, from Rob's point of view, is that Rachael enjoys reading Literature (she is actually familiar with Scandinavian writer Knut Hamsun), something about which Veronica is basically clueless. Rachael inspires Rob to take another look at some of his past writing attempts, stashed in a drawer. Her sweet nature begins to show Rob that there really is a light at the end of his emotional tunnel.

This is a short novel, but an uncomprising one, moving from bitter to almost optimistic. It shows the big difference between "sexual" love and "real" love. There may have been a little too much emphasis on the sex scenes, but this is still a good piece of writing that is worth reading.