SOURCE: Phillips, Robert. “Making Sense of What Takes Place.” Hudson Review 45, no. 3 (autumn 1992): 491-98.

In the following excerpt, Phillips argues that Outerbridge Reach is a successfully engaging narrative due to Stone's use of meticulous detail.

“I know of almost no pleasure greater than having a piece of fiction draw together disparate incidents so that they relate to one another and confirm that feeling that life itself is a creative process,” John Cheever wrote in one of his letters; “that one thing is put purposefully upon another, that what is lost in one encounter is replenished in the rest, and that we possess some power to make sense of what takes place.” The best of the following works of fiction accomplish just that, and when a novel or story fails, it often may be because the writer failed to “make sense of what takes place.” The reader is left...