The Man Who Wanted More

OUTERBRIDGE REACH by Robert Stone

Ticknor & Fields; 409 pages; $21.95

Roughly half of this novel, Robert Stone's fifth, is occupied with putting together the complicated and elaborate house of cards that will spectacularly blow apart during the second half. In less assured hands, such a long swatch of narrative exposition might seem cumbersome, even a little tedious. Not so in Outerbridge Reach. A lot happens in Stone's fiction, especially when nothing particular seems to be going on. The author's laconic prose manages to be both dexterous and sinister.

Stone's task this time resembles the ones he undertook in such previous novels as Dog Soldiers (1974) and A Flag for Sunrise (1981): exposing characters to dangers, external and psychological, that they may be unprepared to handle. Owen Browne, fortyish, a graduate of the Naval Academy who served four years in Vietnam, now sells pleasure boats for an outfit called Altan Marine. Ruggedly handsome -- he appears in company promotional videotapes -- Browne is also by most conventional standards a good person, dutiful, loyal and faithful to Anne, an editor, writer and his wife of 20 years. The Brownes have a comfortable Connecticut house, an island summer retreat and a mildly rebellious teenage daughter. Owen is, in other words, a prime candidate for mid-life crisis. Sure enough, one arrives: "For his own part, he was tired of living for himself and those who were him by extension. It was impossible, he thought. Empty and impossible. He wanted more."

More is what he gets, thanks to the sudden disappearance of Matty Hylan, a flamboyant millionaire who owns a conglomeration of companies, including the one that employs Browne. The runaway entrepreneur leaves behind a crumbling financial empire and the commitment he had made to skipper a new Altan Marine model in an around-the-world sailing race called the Eglantine Solo. Hylan's beleaguered lieutenants scramble for a replacement and find him in one of their own employees, Owen Browne.

Owen, of course, jumps at the chance to get out of his routine, even though his only previous experience of sailing alone was a five-day journey from West Palm Beach, Fla., to New Bern, N.C., during which he fell prey to hallucinations. Anne, at first, thinks the whole idea is crazy: "She was certain she could prevent him from trying it, if she dared. But then there would be the rest of life to get through." So Anne accedes to the plan and talks herself into becoming its cheerleader: "Imagine what kind of a feeling it is," she says. "Making your way across all that ocean. Making your way across the whole world. All on your own savvy and endurance."

This is spoken not to her husband but to Ron Strickland, a documentary filmmaker who had been hired by Hylan's company, in a typically dopey corporate move, to record the millionaire at sea, and who has now inherited Owen Browne as a subject instead. Strickland's modest fame rests on his ability to make people look ridiculous onscreen, and he is, by and large, willing to jettison Hylan and try out his technique on the photogenic and seemingly unassailable Brownes. Looking at some still photographs of the couple, Strickland's assistant remarks that Owen and Anne "don't resemble our usual run of scumbag." Strickland replies, "Trust me."