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Huge (2009)

by James W. Fuerst(Favorite Author)

3.24 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0307452492 (ISBN13: 9780307452498)

languge

English

genre

Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction

publisher

Broadway Books

review 1: Eugene Smalls is hitting his teens during the 1980s in New Jersey. He may have a high IQ, but it is his bad reputation that everyone knows about.Channeling the characters from Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, 'Huge' takes on his first real case solving the mystery of who tagged the Seniors' Home sign. And along the way learns a little more about himself and growing up.Written in the noir style jargon and interweaving the teen talk of the era, Fuerst gives the reader an enjoyable ride on this wild adventure of a boy coming of age. His prickly relationships with family and schoolmates, and his own emotions of dealing with situations. All done with a sense of humour and action.
review 2: Excellent first novel by James Fuerst. A great coming of age story tha... moret instantly gets into your head and infects you with the voice of Eugene "Huge" Smalls who channels the identities of the classic noir detectives of yore like Marlow and Spade. In fact from the opening paragraph it is hard not to hear the narrator's voice as that of one of the classic black and white movie voiceovers from the 50's. The story was a good mix of those classic detective stories and Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" which for those of you that haven't read it is also a detective story featuring a young boy with a rare glimpse into living life with Asperger's Syndrome. In this case, our hero, Huge, is a 12-year old genius who bottles everything up inside and explodes out of control when it all boils to the top. In and out of therapy, with a best friend who is a stuffed frog, Thrash, who is the only person he can talk to, we get a rare glimpse into the mind of a child with a different disorder, but with similar results. We follow Huge working to solve the case of the perpetrator who painted his Grandma's retirement home sign to say Retarted rather than retirement. Along the way we watch Huge stretch and grow, with set-back after set-back and a host of hilarious characters like Grannie, his client and dementia ridden grandmother, Staci, the girl who thinks everything is okay, Darren, his sister Neecy's stoner boyfriend, or Razor, the middle school bully who lacks brain and control. All of these elements combine to keep you laughing all of the way to the last page. Highly recommend this one to anyone that likes dark humor, mystery, coming-of-age stories, or wants a sneak peak into the mind of mixed-up big-hearted kid and the day to day struggles of life stuck in your head. less

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