SOURCE: Saari, Jon. Review of Outerbridge Reach, by Robert Stone. Antioch Review 50, no. 4 (fall 1992): 771-72.

In the following review, Saari contends that Stone is a “writer of rare power” who successfully examines the darker side of human nature in works such as Outerbridge Reach.

This novel [Outerbridge Reach] continues the themes that run through all of Stone's books and reinforces why he is regarded as a writer of rare power. He persuades through his understanding of the darker side of human motivation, and his literary progenitors are clearly Melville and Hawthorne. In this new novel the classic themes of obsession and confrontation with the unknown and evil take a new twist when atypical Stone protagonists—upright Owen Browne and his wife, Anne—leave their sheltered middle-class existence and seek a future of risk and danger.

Usually Stone characters like teetering on the edge of life and its possibilities...