Huge: A Novel

By James Fuerst

Life hasn’t been easy for Eugene “Huge” Smalls.

Sure, his IQ is off the charts, but that doesn’t help much when you’re growing up in the 1980s in a dreary New Jersey town where your bad reputation precedes you, the public school system’s written you off as a lost cause, and even your own family seems out to get you.

But it’s not all bad. Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett have taught Huge everything he needs to know about being a hard-boiled detective . . . and he’s just been hired to solve his first case.

What he doesn’t realize is that his search for the truth will change everything for him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 7, 2009
• ISBN: 9780307452511

Reviews for Huge

[chazzifrazz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mystery with hard-boiled 12-year-old as detective. Entertaining and fresh--would entertain a modern teen as well as an adult (language not recommended for under-13s).

[carriewuj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.5 Entertaining audio book for adults, but with a kid narrator. Genie Smalls is stuck in the summer between 6th and 7th grade. He is IQ brilliant, but troubled with rage and behavioral issues that give him a hard time socially, not to mention his name and his size (small) and the fact that he doesn't have a Dad (he walked out) and his single mom and older sister Nicey (short for Denise) are raising him - though supportively. His beloved Grandma Tootsie is in a nursing home and his only friend is a stuffed Ninja Turtle he calls Crash. Genie (who has begun calling himself Huge) fancies himself a detective, which his Grandma encourages and he is currently trying to solve a case of property vandalism at the nursing home. He is the most foul-mouthed 12 year old I've encountered, but also kind of endearing in that he thinks things through (sometimes too much) and really has a fierce love and loyalty for these women in his life. The story takes place in a Jersey shore suburb in the 80s, and the references to that era are almost worth the read alone: Steak-ums, Jams shorts, and the iconic banana seat bike. The cruiser, as Huge calls it, is his main transport around town and he covers a lot of ground in his detective work, but what he learns is greater than whodunnit: he figures out the girl he likes (Staci) likes him back, his mom and sister and Grandma are his greatest supporters, he can learn to control his impulses and anger, and he can have a fresh start when he starts Jr. High in the Fall. Kind of like a junior Holden Caulfield, Huge has a journey with important episodes along the way - he gets roughed up, he has moments of triumph at a high school party, he learns compassion and shades of gray, he fights with his own anxiety and insecurity and he emerges toward growing up.

[johnhastie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A thoroughly entertaining coming-of-age/whodunnit that often put me in mind of Curious Incident.

The protagonist, Eugene (aka "Huge") is a 12-year-old outcast with "acting-out" issues and an unhealthy obsession with the noir writings of Hammet, Chandler, Cain, and the like. He decides to bring the scum that defaced the sign at his Grandmother's nursing home to justice with the help of his imaginary muscle ("Thrash") and his sweet Schwinn Stingray ("The Cruiser").

The 1980s New Jersey suburbs are hilariously depicted warts-and-all and Huge himself is a pretty unforgettable character.

It's written for adults (there are a couple of "adult themed moments"), but should have no trouble finding an appreciative audience among the high school set.

Fun and satisfying.

[karl6steel · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wild story about an angry 12-year-old whose obsession with detective fiction is both his salvation and family curse. Folks will be inclined to cf. Huge to other postmodern engagements with detective fiction (Auster, Chabon, maybe even Nabokov) but Huge, I think, surpasses them in its ethical engagement (how do we know the right thing to do? is this even possible?), its feminism, and its final awareness that escaping genre doesn't require losing everything. Wonderful.

[amaraduende · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was GREAT. Hysterical at times, very poignant, and what a main character! Charming, believable, a good person who has some problems... like we all do...

[juva_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The story of a junior high outcast with anger management problems. Eugene Smalls has been picked on and misunderstood his whole life. Only his partially senile grandmother has offered him any purpose in his life. Obsessed by classic detective literature, she made Eugene read her entire collection during one of his many school expulsions. Seizing upon the world of danger and respect he found there, Eugene has since dedicated his life to being a private detective, and he is about to get his first case! Someone has vandalized the sign in front of his grandmother's retirement home. Who could have done such a dastardly act? Huge, (Eugene's self-appointed nickname), is dead set on finding out.

[amanderson_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3 1/2 stars for this. A coming-of-age story set in the 1980's about a 12-year-old boy who is both a genius and filled with rage against the world, but not against his beloved grandma. For her, he undertakes a detecting job to sleuth out the graffiti artist who has painted the nursing home sign with insulting remarks. He navigates the world of other teens, girls, and adults. Pretty good story, but I'm thinking would have more appeal for guys.

[imbookingit · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very unique. The protagonist is 12 years old, but this book is not for kids."Huge" (he really wishes everyone would stop calling him Genie) is going to enter 7th grade and the world of Junior High in the fall, but he's entering with two big strikes against him. First, he has a really bad temper. A destroy-the-classroom, terrify-the-students, can't-be-left-home-alone temper. This temper has led him to have one heck of a reputation.Second, he's smart. The kind of book smart that leads kids and teachers to resent him, but doesn't let him figure out what to do about it.The latter is enough to endear the character to me. The fact that he goes to visit his grandmother in the nursing home didn't hurt either. His grandmother has encouraged a love of detective fiction in him, and now she wants to hire him to track down who vandalized the retirement home sign.The book is primarily a coming of age novel, with some preteen adventure thrown in. It's funny at times, touching at others.Now, there's one thing I have to mention, because it bothered me. Remember when I said this book wasn't for kids? Everything I've said so far could make a great book, readable by tweens/early teens and adults as well.Unfortunately, this book dwells way too much on the sex life of a not yet teenager: his experience with his exhibitionist sister (who's portrayed as the normal one in the family); and his experience with a girl his age who's been taken advantage of by an older boy, and who wants to demonstrate what she's learned.It's part of his story, which is an unusual one. I just didn't (personally) find it necessary.

[bohemiangirl35 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Huge by James Fuerst is the cutest coming-of-age story about a 12-year-old boy named Eugene "Genie" "Huge" Smalls with very few social skills, who nowadays would probably be diagnosed with ADHD.It's summertime in the early 80's in New Jersey. Huge doesn't have any friends, except his stuffed frog named Thrash that his counselor gave him. His dad has left so his family is down to him, his mom, his older sister Eunice who goes by Niecey (I don't know how to spell it) and his grandma. His grandma is sick and stays in a nursing home now. In the opening scenes, he's visiting his grandma and sees that somebody has vandalized the nursing home sign, changing "Retirement Home" to "Retartett Home." Huge thinks about the detective novels his grandma gave him before she was senile and takes on this case of vandalism to stand up for the old people.Huge misreads all the clues and when the truth comes out, it is laugh-out-loud funny. Huge questions a teenager he suspects of the vandalism, and the older boy advises him to get rid of his "ninja turtle" (Thrash) before starting junior high or everyone will call him a fag. Huge gets mad and thinks: "I'd learned all about prejudice in social studies. It was all the same, and I wasn't going to take it. First they called you names. Then they made you use separate bathrooms. And then they crammed you into the bottom of a slave ship headed for the concentration camp. I'd be damned if that happened on my watch."The only drawback to the book is all the cursing in the beginning. It seems a little overdone. Once you get past that, the rest is great.Jeff Woodman does an excellent job with the surfer dude accents and attitudes of the various characters.

[jnfalvey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Readers will enjoy following the exploits of Eugene "Huge" Smalls as he tries to find himself even as he finds the perpetrator of the crime at the Oakshade Retirement Home. At times, Fuerst's insistence on sticking to a Dashiell-Hammettesque tone for Huge's narration gets in the way of his character; it takes 1/2 the book to get a sense of Huge as more than a play-acting caricature and more as a real kid with some serious anger issues and the courage to try and work through them. After that, the last half is a real pleasure as we get to see how he tries to do just that.

[downtownlibrarian · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If Harriet the Spy were male, had an anger management problem, and read a lot of Dashiell Hammett, she might be a little like Eugene (Huge) Smalls. More bildungsroman than detective novel, it is above all a funny and moving portrayal of adolescence. A very good read!

[lindenstein · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As I began this book, it seemed to resemble the literary lovechild of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" and "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." But I was mistaken, and I was not disappointed by what the book delivered.The story is told with a serious dose of humor and irony, and the family dynamics are pretty believable. Huge seems to accept things in life towards the end of the book that he wouldn't have accepted at the book's beginning, which shows his growth and maturity; at the end of the day, this is a coming-of-coming-of-age story, because it ends right where the traditional coming-of-age story begins, when the boy begins his first real relationship with a girl.One of the the best qualities of this book was the way it blended the many different genres that are all present at the same time: mystery, teen angst, and honest characterization of a time/place that are clearly important for the person telling the story (both the protagonist and the writer) are all present at the same time, playing off each other and adding value to each of the characteristics.I would definitely recommend this book. While I wouldn't say it is one of the best books of the year, I really did enjoy it and was rooting for Huge by the end of the book.

[little_prof · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ok, before I get into the meat of this review: what have I done wrong? What, exactly, did I do to anger the cover design people at Random House? First they make Gone Away World neon pink, bright green, and fuzzy, and now... now.... Huge is a wonderful first novel. Its protagonist is a twelve year old boy who has read way too much Chandler, Hammett, and all the other world-weary detectives, and has convinced himself that he's a kindred spirit to them. So what does Random House do? They make a book cover that looks like it was decorated by an eight year old girl (or Sara)! It's sparkly! It looks like a trout! I just... I know there are things I don't understand in this world. Apparently, cover design is one of them. Anyway, on to Huge. It's tempting to simply write about how well Fuerst sells his conceit - it's not that Eugene Smalls (formerly - and currently - known affectionately as 'Gene', desperate to convince people to call him 'Huge', like the first three letters of his name, despite the fact that he's tiny) actually lives in a hard-boiled world. There are no untrustworthy dames, no skulking mooks, no long shadows covering rain-and-neon swept streets. He's living a normal, lower-middle class life, trying to keep up with his older sister and help out his single mom. It's just that his grandmother has been consistently feeding him a diet of hard-boiled detective novels, and transforming himself into a steely-eyed, hard-hearted flatfoot is the only way he knows to cope with his changing world, faced as he is with the daunting task of entering adolescence. The mystery elements in Huge are light, but factor large into Eugene's world. Someone has vandalized the sign of his grandmother's retirement home. They're spray-painted 'retarted' over the world 'retirement'. It's not just the vandalism that drives Eugene up the wall; it's the fact that they misspelled their own taunt. And so off he goes, onto his own case, regardless of whether his mother or sister want him to. He's not a popular boy, intelligent but reclusive, prone to rages he can't control, and he knows he's on his own. Besides, anything's better that facing the end of summer and the upcoming school year. And that's where Fuerst, to put it simply, wins. Eugene isn't an annoying kid. He's also not an adult shrunk to miniature size. He's a twelve year old, with a twelve year old's sense of time, a twelve year old's sense of his place in the world, a twelve year old's sense of purpose and drive and fear. Hyperbole or not, he belongs in the ranks with Mitchell's Jason Taylor, McCammon's Cory Mackenson, and, yes, Salinger's Holden Caulfield. The joy in reading Huge is in watching Eugene grow up between the pages, and slowly start to question whether viewing the world through noir-tinted glasses - and keeping himself locked off from the world beyond him - is really such a wise choice to make. -Drew

[loosha_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Eugene. Everyone calls him Genie, but his name is Huge. He's 12, too intelligent for a normal life, too angry to fit in. He built his bicycle, the Cruiser, from spare parts; his constant companion is a stuffed frog with an attitude; his best friend is his older 'hot' sister who facilites his voyeuristic initiation to, well, you know. He's skipped a grade, he's repeated a grade, he's punched out a teacher who just didn't get him, he's punched out a classmate who won top honours that should have been his. His mother single-parents him the best she can. He visits (and loves) his grandma in the retirement home and she turns him on to detective work. Yes, he will solve the crime...who defaced the sign at the home? Huge is a timely character, the story is true and sweet. For me, good to get back into the pulse of youth.

[miyurose_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

First of all, I feel like this novel is a bit mis-characterized. It didn’t feel like a YA novel to me (and I do read YA). Instead, it felt like a coming-of-age story with a 12 year old protagonist that is written for adults. Which is perfectly fine! Just not what I expected.The tone of the novel was a *little* bit overdone. Huge (Eugene) is very brash, very angry, and not quite as tough or mature as he thinks he is. It took me a while to convince myself that his speech/actions/thoughts/etc were realistic, but since I am neither an extra-intelligent 12 year old boy, nor have I spoken with one in a few years, they’re probably not that far off.Once you get past all that, what you have is a story about a kid who is lonely. His sister won’t hang out with him anymore, his grandmother is becoming senile, his mom works all the time, and the few kids who used to be his friends are no longer allowed to associate with him, since he has a bit of an anger management problem. His solace is found in his stuffed frog, Thrash (a pretty blatant symbolic manifestation of his suppressed rage) and in the classic noir detective novels that his grandmother thrust upon him during his 3 month suspension. Thanks to those novels, he is prone to finding mysteries in the mundane and making more out of situations than what is really there. In the end, this story is about Huge finding his place, and realizing that life doesn’t have to be him against the world.He really did grow on me, and one particular passage struck me as a perfect illustration of Huge.'If I ever got out of this, I’d start a new, top-secret journal, which I’d keep in a booby-trapped safe, and I’d compile my own list of pointers or rules that other detectives never told you. And my first rule would be: If you were going out to the woods in homemade ninja shorts after a day of hard rain, you *always* had to wear underwear, just in case you fell on your butt, because having to deal with swamp ass for the rest of the night totally sucked. That was a solid first principle — Keep your ass dry — and I wish I’d thought of it earlier because it didn’t do me a damn bit of good now.'So if you like coming of age stories about brash, over-the-top, slightly damaged boys, don’t be afraid to pick up this book. And keep your ass dry.

[kevinjoseph_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

James Fuerst brings a fresh approach to the coming-of-age novel, arming its twelve-year-old protagonist Eugene "Huge" Smalls with a distinctive voice that's shaped by the hard-boiled detective novels his grandmother funnels to him as well as the self-reliant streak he subconciously adopts after struggling through a loaned copy of Thoreau. Gifted with a high IQ and active imagination, but impeded by the absence of a father figure, his diminuative stature, and a growing sense of paranoia, Huge struggles to control violent impulses that have made him a social outcast. While some have criticized the story for for its plotlessness, I see that as a key ingredient of the novel. Like many intelligent and creative kids his age, Huge imagines a nefarious plot where none exists, and his gradual realization of the effects of his paranoia and distrust becomes central to his maturation. Despite these serious themes, this novel is also wickedly funny. Huge's cheesy, hardboiled metaphors are a great touch, as are his impressions of the "bad" kids in Darren's posse. And his terror-stricken romance with Staci captures perfectly the swirling emotions comprising a boy's first infatuation. Readers who grew up in the 1980s will also dig the pop culture references and lingo.