Customer Reviews

Huge: A Novel

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(43)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

The story is set in a middle-sized New Jersey town in the mid 1980s. Eugene Smalls is called "Genie" by everybody but he wants to be called "Huge." He isn't huge though. He's small. He's 12 years old (almost 13.) He is smarter than everyone around him, but he has trouble expressing himself, and other people's stupidity makes him furious. He lashes out violently, and has been branded a "problem child." During a long suspension from school (sometime before the novel starts,) he read a lot of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Sherlock Holmes. He also built a totally sweet bike out of spare parts. Summer is ending, Huge is going to be going to Junior High in the fall, and this is when our story unfolds. It is told in a semi-noir manner, in first person with lots of introspective flashbacks and sidetracks.

His senile grandmother (who gave him all the detective books) hires Huge to solve the mystery of the vandalized sign at the retirement home, and he gradually uncovers a tangled web of treachery and deceit among the kids in his town. Or does he? Huge may be freakishly smart, but he's still a kid. He misses a lot. Plus, he has a sidekick named Thrash (given to him by his guidance councilor) who tends not to give Huge the best advice...

The language of this book is vulgar but funny. Some of the vernacular sounds more like 2000s than 1980s. I don't remember kids talking like that when I was in 6th grade back in 1986, but I didn't grow up in New Jersey. Huge himself is so furious, so off-kilter, and so full of hard-boiled detective fiction, that for the first third of the book I kept picturing him as a grizzled 40-year-old midget instead of a kid. His dialogue and thought processes are hilarious yet incisive.

Lots of 1980s period details reminded me of my own childhood, but it was difficult to pin down an exact year. Seems like 1986 to me; I don't see how it could be earlier than that.

The climax of the novel and the breaking of the case seemed somewhat labored. At some point the story metamorphoses into a "coming-of-age" tale, and everything gets sort of wanky and epiphanic near the end. Then the book goes on for another chapter AFTER the apparent ending, only to stop abruptly without a clear resolution. Sometimes it's nice to be left hanging, but in this case it felt like a trick.

This book was enjoyable but not great. Good summer reading.

Huge is the story of a smart, complicated boy who spends the summer before sixth grade tackling what starts off as a fairly mundane adventure. The encyclopedia brown introduction quickly blossoms into a huge adventure that stretches his character in all directions. We've all been through the challenges of transitioning from childhood to young adulthood. All of that confusion, emotion, angst and yearning are captured in Huge. The author convincingly, with skill and charm, blends the extraordinary with the expected to create a relatable and convincing journey.

The plot centers on the vandalism of a sign outside the main character's grandmother's retirement home. The main character, Huge, is tasked by his grandmother with getting to the bottom of this whodunnit. It serves as the perfect vehicle to both explore and expand Huge's captivating personality. The plot constantly drives both action and character development. While the detective story works well as a subtle backdrop to the more significant developments between characters, it's never, even temporarily abandoned.

The mature and adolescent themes visited through the eyes of a uniquely sophisticated and heroic, yet immature and obviously inexperienced youth struck a huge resonant note deep within me. Huge is easily the best book I've read this year. I can easily recommend this book to anyone and everyone. However, the vocabulary and content may be too much for some preteens.

As someone who grew up longing for a bike with a banana seat, I felt an instant kinship with Eugene "Huge", the main character of this book. He's 12 going on 13, and is a mixed up kid trying to do the right thing, but finding himself in trouble, some real, some of his own imagining, navigating relationships with the other boys, and some girls, and moving towards adulthood. HUGE does remind me of Catcher in the Rye in a way, because it is about a kid who is more or less on his own, parents in the background, navigating an independence with an unfounded confidence and (to the reader) obviously adolescent naivete. As first I was not sure if I'd really dig this story (is it really for young adults? I wondered, and the answer is, no, not really, not to me), but I got to really like the main character and root for him as he pursues Stacy and mixes it up with the big kids, crusing around town on his cool Schwinn Stingray. Fun novel.

1980's era New Jersey. Many delightful references are peppered throughout this book. The main character is "almost thirteen" so he talks like a thirteen year old would, potty-mouth and all. Only he thinks he is a Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe detective on a case about a vandalized retirement home sign. Half-way through reading, the novelty of Eugene "Huge" Smalls hard-edged detective-talk wears away, yet you are left with a very compelling coming-of-age story that is brilliantly written. Fuerst does a great job of capturing the mind of a child who gets wound up, where one thought just snowballs into more and more paranoid thoughts. There are only a couple of innocent sexual themes that are touched upon and Fuerst does a great job of not being too explicit, yet conveying the excitement of Huge's encounters with girls. Definitely not a story for 13 year olds, but for those of us who were 13 in the 80's this is the perfect novel to bring you back to that time, and watch "Huge" try to solve a crime as much as try to understand himself.

Eugene "Huge" (not "Genie"!) Smalls is an undeniably disturbed preteen in a stifling New Jersey town.

Due to his grandmother's loving (if misguided) influence, Huge is fascinated with noir detectives and fancies himself to be a developing Sam Spade. Anchored to this self-image and further weighed down by his own obsessive nature, Huge is on a mission of well-meaning self-destruction. As he meanders about on his 'case' (solving some incidental vandalism at an old folk's home), Huge reveals his own brief (if incident-packed) past.

The story is Huge's coming of age. As he pedals around town in his last year before junior high, Huge slowly but steadily learns what the difference is between a boy (even a boy detective) and a grown man. With less-than-subtle references to The Catcher in the Rye, Walden and the Raymond Chandler books, the author is clearly out to describe life for a modern outsider - and he succeeds. Huge is alienated from the world around him in a wide variety of ways (many of them self-created).

Loving and misguided is the overall theme to the book. Everyone around Huge is flawed, but, generally-speaking, well-meaning. His mom doesn't understand him, but tried. His sister oscillates between creepy and supportive, as she battles with her own adolescent problems. His grandmother, his sister's boyfriend, his love interest and his estranged best friend... all good people, just having a hard time struggling with problems of their own. From this point of view, Huge is a surprisingly optimistic novel. People are OK (a little screwy, but they mean well).

Institutions, however, are nowhere near as charitable. Eugene, if you'll pardon the cliche, is a 'failure of the system'. He's bounced forward and backwards in school - surfing his genius intelligence and being dragged down by his terrible behaviour. His mother struggles to support them as her insurance and the school system both compete to make her life miserable. Eugene's grandmother is essentially cheated by her old age home. And the various therapists and counselors all combine to let Eugene down. People may be ok, but the bureaucracy of people is a disaster.

One of the most interesting parts of the book is the writing style. Fuerst channels noir fiction exceptionally well - almost too well. Eugene thinks and speaks like a noir detective, and his entire view of the world is colored (or black-and-white) in that particular way. It is a pleasure to read, and provides many of the book's funnier moments. It is also utterly infectious - one of those rare books that, even after putting it down, I still wound up 'thinking' in the same way as Eugene (clearly tapping into my inner 12 year old!)

Huge is a somewhat dark but wholly entertaining book. Perhaps the best news is that it is Fuerst's debut novel, meaning there could be many more to come...

I was intrigued by this novel before it arrived. Both the time period and the premise appealed to me. Fuerst tells the story of Eugene Huge Smalls, a 12 y.o. boy who is a big fan of pulp detectives. As with most boys (or girls) at that age, he is intensely emotional and often overeacts to the slightest situation. Add to this a broad imagination that sees elements of the hardboiled detective stories he loves in everyday situations and you have some picture of this novel. The decision to use Smalls as the narrator works quite well as he mimics the storytelling style of popular pulp detectives to tell what--at times--feels like not much of a story. There is the background story of the vandalism at his grandmother's nursing home; however, this feels sort of contrived as really just a narrative element to create a well-developed if at times unrealistic character. Ultimately this is an enjoyable coming-of-age story but--like so many of the type--reads like the writing and thoughts of a middle age narrator placed in the body of a young boy. I never got the impression that the story, thoughts, events as related read like they were coming from a 12 year old. This is the difficulty of writing a coming-of-age novel and why so few tend to reach the level of excellence.

'Eug' or Huge is the name a boy named Eugene wishes to be called. Unfortunately for him, most people can't seem to retain this and instead call him Genie which has been his name since he was small.

We meet Huge on the verge of the teen years when he's faced with trying to fit into a society which he so far has battled due to a wild excess of testosterone mixed into a short but highly athletic body. To say that he's fought his way through his first twelve years is to put it mildly. His belligerence and unpredictability have given him a rep you may associate with a flask of nitroglycerin more than a kid.

Fancying himself a detective, he sets out, (goaded by old grandma) to solve the mystery of some doings at her retirement community. We follow Huge's first person narrative as he addresses both mysteries - the retirement community one and the bigger one of how he is going to position himself in adult society.

We're told Huge is quite intelligent but the author probably gives him more insight into his future and older people than is reasonable. Also sometimes Huge's stream of conscious blather tends to run on a bit long but overall the arc of the character holds the reader's attention well.

The real question is if Huge will, despite having handicapped himself by years of anti-social behavior, be able to integrate himself into society as a whole. If he can, then how can he? The final showdowns are utterly satisfying and do hold together well.

The setting is the 1980's New Jersey. The children's dialect reflects this which probably reflects quite a bit of the author himself. This is not 'War and Peace' or even 'The Naked and the Dead' but it's a pleasant well done small novel worth a read.

At first I wasn't sure if this was a YA book or an adult title. Genie, who prefers to be called "Huge" despite the fact that he is rather small, at times speaks likes an adult, largely due to the steady diet of hard-boiled detective novels that his grandmother gives him. When we enter the scene, Huge is given a "case" by his grandmother when her retirement home is defaced with graffiti. He is determined to find out who did it. He rides his tricked-out bike around the neighborhood in search of clues and evidence.

His simple quest is complicated by several things: his pushy sister who he suspects is heading the wrong direction in her life; his single parent mother who tends bar in the evenings; his attraction to a precocious girl in his class; older boys who would gladly pummel him without provocation, a lack of friends. Because of behavior problems and past episodes of acting out Huge is on notice and the adults around him only see a kid with issues.

As the story unfurls we are taken on a journey which on the surface seems straight-forward, but ends up with some twists and turns. It eventually becomes clear that this really is an adult novel that focuses on a young boy, and I wouldn't recommend the book for kids younger than advanced high school. While it isn't a perfect book, the pacing could have been tightened and the story line could have stood some streamlining, I enjoyed it and found myself staying up late to finish the book as it all fell into place at the end.

This is a book written for adults that happens to have a youthful main character. The author has astonishing insight into human nature and I hope his next book will be printed soon! (I am a voracious reader and this book is among my all-time favorites- thank you, Mr. Fuerst!)

I liked the story, I wanted to like it and I'm glad it ended the way it did. It wasn't spellbounding or breathtaking but it was a sweet simple story about a misunderstood boy. Who can't relate to feeling a little out of the ordinary at times and uncomfortable around others? It was short, funny, and thoughtful at the same time. Read and enjoy reminiscing about your own childhood while doing so.