Brewster North grows up on the tranquil Rhode Island coast, a world of largely carefree holidays and happy families, hearing stories of other places and dreaming, even though life is largely dominated by his increasingly unhinged mother, Kit. When of an age, he goes travelling, but his mother's suicide while away always haunts him as he searches for a vacation - through people, places, jobs, drugs, sex. Especially sex. And yet he never does seem to be able to reach the Bali related to him at an early age by his Uncle Jib, the venue he elected as the ultimate, impossible vacation, because, as he concedes, for the majority of the novel Brewster is never entirely sure what he's taking a vacation from.

The great strength of this book is also, paradoxically, its greatest weakness. At least if anyone approaches with more than a fleeting knowledge of Gray's art, for in essence his work is his life. His earlier books - Swimming To Cambodia, Monster In A Box - his film work (in The Killing Fields, David Byrne's True Stories, his own monologues) is all, to a greater or lesser extent, about himself, about his white middle class angst seeking to appreciate, if never quite fit in, other ways of life. To find that elusive happiness. Thus, Brewster North's voice is always Spalding Gray's and anyone familiar with, especially, the early autobiographical essays will find many parallels in here.

Brewster travels from his home to New York, on to Texas, then it's off to India for a brief flirtation with the mystical (and for his long-time girlfriend to buy rugs), than back via Amsterdam (a flirtation with the city's Gay culture) back to New York (and an hysterical flirtation with the porn industry), before finally travelling west (flirting with hippiedom) and finding a certain sense of self and purpose in a Las Vegas gaol. All packed into 228 pages, the novel moves with an invigorating lick, dropping from the poignant (mainly in dealings with his mother) into the ridiculous by turn, with varying results. The Indian portions visiting the Bhagwan's ashram and seeking tranquillity in the Himalayas tend to drag, where the filming of a low-rent surreal hardcore pirate epic without the aid of 'fluffers' (find out for yourself) is over all too quickly.

Impossible Vacation has the feel of novel created a little too far by the editor's red pencil as by the author, the elliptical structure a little too pat, the end lurching over the horizon a little too suddenly for comfort. But Gray can turn a neat, distinctive phrase at the drop of a hat, and the book comes suffused with his wry sense of the absurd and the important ability to be self-deprecating where needed. It's just that next time he puts pen to paper maybe he should look outside himself a little more. Make it up.