Jack, boyhood friend of protagonists Will and Hand, dies in a road accident. Despite recently earning $80,000 by selling the image of a silhouette of himself screwing in a light bulb, Will is unable to use this money to buy medical assistance to save Jack.

So Will and Hand embark upon a week long round-the-world trip, planning to distribute the filthy lucre - which has proved so useless to them - to the poor and needy along the way.

The world tour is compressed into stop-offs in Senegal, Morocco, Estonia and Latvia, where the boys end up not so much handing the money out as realising how hard it is to part with it.

Eggers is at his best when he allows himself a long descriptive leash, but he's often reining himself in to tell us more about what his characters don't do than what they do.

Which is sometimes illuminating, as this is really what the book is about - two American twenty-somethings who go out into the world but still fail to wholly connect with it - but sometimes just frustrating.

Nonetheless the book is pacey with some well-observed characters along the way. Eggers is no Jack Kerouac, but as a second book this is a promising indication of finer things to come.

Updated: 09:23 Wednesday, July 02, 2003