Controlled Flight Into Terrain

After early, truncated career attempts, Lewis Berlin has spent much of his life in adventures of soul and body. Poor as a child, in his twenties he inherits large. Financial independence brings obvious freedoms but also works to constrict his life in a number of ways. His funny, engaging voice pulls the reader along at high speeds as he recounts his adventures, his victories and defeats, and his hopes for the future.

Controlled Flight Into Terrain is, indeed, an intense work. It is intensely heartfelt, intensely involving, and intensely sexual. It is written with skill and compassion and love for poor, suffering humankind. What is interesting and compelling in this book is the existential dilemma of the protagonist, the nihilistic Lewis. He is dissociated from his life but so achingly wants to feel something that he substitutes multitudinous sexual encounters for intimacy, and his heroin habit only dissociates him all the more. He's a searcher in a long line of literary searchers.

Hardin writes very well. His authorial voice is strong. Lewis's personality comes through, and then some. The dialogue is excellent and characterizations are insightful-there are lovely images and descriptions throughout. The writing is intelligent, facile, literary. It's also sometimes quite funny.

If you're squeamish reading about sex and eroticism, then perhaps this book isn't for you. However, this book does accomplish, among other things, at least one thing that literature is supposed to do, which is that it makes you look at lives-yours, others'-and life in general and come to grips with it. It will make you assess and see where you are, where you should be, and where you could be. Literature is supposed to make you feel and think and care, and this book does all of those things.

-Susan Samson, Editor