SOURCE: Eder, Richard. “Against the Tides of Mediocrity.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (1 March 1992): 3, 5.

In the following review, Eder alternately praises and faults Outerbridge Reach, calling the writing “lucid and thrilling” in its passages about the sea but “bombastic” in its development of certain characters and events.

Even the climate in Outerbridge Reach speaks corruption. It declares America's decline in loyalty, valor, love, republican virtue, individual pride, sound workmanship and the tang of the wilderness. Global consumer greed equals global warming; it has been the mildest winter in 100 years: “The ambiguity of the weather made time seem slack and the year spiritless.”

Such is the opening and theme of Robert Stone's novel about a man's ill-fated revolt against the moral entropy of the day. Owen Browne's revolt is set off by a defective plastic tube, made in South Korea, in the bilge-pump of the spanking new 45-foot sloop...