Impossible Vacation

The acclaimed monologist and author of Swimming to Cambodia , Sex and Death to the Age 14 and Monster in a Box (which concerned the writing of this novel), Gray once again proves that his art is his life. The quest for Eden (or is it nirvana?) drives the protagonist--called Brewster North--to avoid confusion, since Brewster North is a stop on Metro-North line from childhood, when an uncle's gift of a mask from Bali inspired in his mind a vision of that fabled island as a place of perfect peace and well-being. Brewster accepts his constant yearnings, knowing that ``forever I would always be a little bit in the place that I was not.'' His other fixation is his emotionally unstable mom, to whom he remains helplessly in thrall even after she commits suicide. He is an anguished, overprivileged WASP filled with upper-crust alienation and ennui; this is Marquand territory with a '90s twist. Brewster careens from Provincetown to the Himalayas to the Grand Canyon in his search for a place where he doesn't feel crazy. Gray's narrative style is frequently hilarious, and we feel the panicky logic of Brewster's perpetual flight even as we recognize its psychotic underpinnings. This is darkly comic performance art by the page, executed with great elan and intelligence. (May)