Volume 39, Number 6 · March 26, 1992
Fall of Valor
By Robert M. Adams
Outerbridge Reach
by Robert Stone
Ticknor and Fields, 409 pp., $21.95
The new book by Robert Stone is a tough Irish-American novel set mainly in and around New York harbor. Its themes are contemporary and touched with cruelty; its prose is as hard as that of John O'Hara, which is high praise. Though basically it is an action story, and Stone's considerable reputation is that of a hard-boiled suspense novelist, the reflective reader will find in the pages of Outerbridge Reach a good deal on which to meditate. Like John Converse, the very unheroic hero of Stone's earlier novel Dog Soldiers, the central figure of Outerbridge Reach is a weak man in a tough situation; that can be either an odd predilection of Stone's imagination, a reflection on suburban society, or an almost Old Testament denunciation of a society choking on its own naiveté, weakness, and self-disgust. The toughness of Stone's novels has been readily accepted as on the surface; but there's an inner toughness of judgment that, when one stubs one's toe on it, is even more impressive.
Review, 2079 words
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