Robert Stone (Robert Stone obituary | Books | The Guardian) offered Outerbridge Reach in 1992 as his fifth novel. A rich business man with playboy tendencies enters a round-the-world sailing race to promote a new design of yacht his firm has developed. After a financial scandal his place is taken by Owen Browne, a salesman and veteran of Vietnam.
When the vessel fails in the South Atlantic, Browne sabotages the transponder, compiles false logs and waits for his competitors in order to join them, and beat them, on the way home. So he drifts in the empty ocean. This offers a setting for meditations on spiritual loneliness and leads him towards cosmic pessimism. Deranged, and having convinced himself that he has discovered the secret of the Universe, he walks off the boat.
This tale is not so far-fetched. The author may have been stimulated by the disappearance of Donald Crowhurst (Donald Crowhurst – Wikipedia) in similar circumstances in 1969.
This is a tough and gripping narrative with themes of drugs, murder, revolution, betrayal, and infidelity. It dwells on the forces that drive human beings to extremes. Recommended for those of stout heart.
Check if this fiction from 1992 is available at your local library here Home | South Lanarkshire Libraries (sllclibrary.co.uk).
417 pages in Picador
First published 1992
ISBN-13 : 978-1509809943
