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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
JAMES W. FUERST spent his teenage years innbsp;New Jerseynbsp;and now lives innbsp;Brooklyn. nbsp;He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. fromnbsp;Harvardnbsp;Universitynbsp;and holds an M.F.A from The New School. Huge is his first novel.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-Eugene "Huge" Smalls is a short, smart, blond going-on-13 outcast with anger-management issues, a stuffed-frog alter ego, a homemade tricked-out ride called the Cruiser, and a Philip Marlowe attitude. What Huge lacks in stature is made up for by his intense emotional reactions and overactive imagination. He lives in a boring small town in 1980s New Jersey where his father has abandoned him, his waitress mother, and his hot older sister to fend for themselves. While on a visit with his dearly beloved and somewhat senile grandmother at a retirement home, she hires him to solve his first real detective case. As he gathers clues, he tells about his past transgressions and feelings, a lost friendship, and various crushes and clashes including those involving retirement-home workers, his sister's friends, and a special girl his own age. Huge's coming-of-age musings seem mature for a sixth grader, yet these contemplations and Fuerst's portrayals of teenage relationships and experiences will resonate with older readers. Using humor and a narrative similar to Raymond Chandler's hardboiled detective novels of the 1940s, Fuerst entertains and draws readers into all the mysteries Huge tries to solve on his own, including those involving self-control, fantasy, friendship, and maturity.-Melanie Parsons, Fairfax County Public Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In his mind's eye, precocious 12-year-old Eugene "Huge" Smalls, the narrator of Fuerst's quirky debut, is the lineal descendant of Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade and other pulp detectives he admires. When the nursing home where his beloved grandmother stays is vandalized, Huge sees a chance to follow in their footsteps by solving the crime. What follows is a picaresque romp around suburban New Jersey as Huge misreads clues, misinterprets motives and mistakes mundane incidents for diabolical schemes as only an inexperienced adolescent with a restless imagination can. Largely plotless, this coming-of-age story is full of awkward digressions. Still, Fuerst demonstrates a sensitive ear for contemporary teen talk, delicacy at handling the amusingly contentious relationship between Huge and his older sister and mom, and skill at conveying a child's-eye view of the world that is full of nostalgia, humor, candor and emotions that all readers can relate to. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An uncompromising 12-year-old gumshoe takes on the case of his short life. The hero of this debut novel is a boy detective, "Huge," who has as much in common with Encyclopedia Brown or the Hardy Boys as Al Swearengen has with The Lone Ranger. A foul-mouthed, scrappy sixth grader with a skyrocketing IQ, Eugene Smalls might be a runt in the eyes of his peers but, in his mind, he's bigger than lifehence the nameand determined to live up to the example set by Raymond Chandler's famous description of what a detective must be in The Simple Art of Murder ("down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid"). "Sure, I realized I didn't exactly fit the bill, because most around here would tell you that I was meaner than a short-order cook and more tarnished than all the girls in Catholic school," says Huge. "So I had two strikes against me from the jump. But I had one thing in my favor: I wasn't afraid of a goddamn thing." Armed with a hero who assumes the most eye-catching characteristics of Holden Caulfield, Phillip Marlowe and Nick Twisp, Fuerst crafts a readable alternative noir set in the early 1980s. Huge takes on the only case he can land, solving the mystery of who tagged his grandmother's nursing home for the princely sum of $10. To his credit, Fuerst pulls off the same trick as the 2005 film Brick in making his protagonist's suburban surroundings and mundane foes seem as hard-boiled and corrupt as those in the Chandler novels Huge treasures. With period detail intactHuge's sources hang out in the arcade, while the private eye rides a bike with a banana seatFuerst still manages to integrate into the mix seedy bureaucrats, treacherous friends and even a couple femme fatales. Bonus points for capturing the pathos of adolescence without talking down to the audience. There are few challenges greater than voicing a smart, tough kid. Fans of teen fiction or hard-boiled detectives will find this one credible and engaging. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* For God's sake, don't call him Genie. The name is Huge, or so Eugene Smalls insists. But folks persist in applying the diminutive, since the 12-year-old is the smallest boy in his sixth-grade class. Small but mean. And tough. And hard-boiled. Just like his hero, Philip Marlowe. The wannabe detective is thrilled when his grandma hires him to find out who has defaced the sign at her retirement home. But Huge has, ahem, huge problems anger management being only one and his investigations may take him to dark places he'd rather not visit. Fuerst's first novel is a bit of a coming-of-age tour de force that borrows some of the tone and attitude of hard-boiled detective fiction while giving its first-person narrator an irresistibly noirish, wise-guy voice, which means that this kid has got some mouth on him. And he sometimes sounds and seems much older than 12. But his search for whodunit, which turns into a search for self and sense in a world that's smaller than it should be, is always engrossing. Huge will occupy a, yes, huge place in readers' affections and memories.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2009 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Fuerst's debut novel about a 12-year-old wannabe detective gives listeners a hilarious, nostalgic look back at the Jersey 'burbs of the 1980s. Eugene "Huge" Smalls, accompanied by his sidekick and only friend, a stuffed turtle, is hired by his possibly senile grandmother to investigate a case of vandalism at her retirement home. Eugene learns how to be "huge" in this coming-of-age tale, even if he doesn't entirely learn how to be a detective. Audie Award winner Jeff Woodman (Stolen Child) lends the story a Stand by Me quality, infusing it with life. A rhinestone-in-the-rough novel and an author to keep an eye on; for appreciators of J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Jack Pendarvis's Shut Up, Ugly. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/09.-Ed.]-Terry Ann Lawler, Phoenix P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.