Reviews

HUGE
Written and read by Brent Butt
Book 232/200
Genre: Thriller
Format: Audio, ARC
Pages/Time: 304/8hr 21min
Published: 2023
Rating: 8.5/10

The nineties was a time of comedic greats; Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Steven Wright, Mitch Hedberg, and … Hobie Huge? HUGE is comedian Brent Butt's dark, thriller debut novel. I know Butt has starred in a bunch of big Canadian TV shows, but my first exposure to the comedian, was this dark thriller.

I quite enjoyed HUGE. I loved the band of comedians traveling across Canada doing stand-up shows. I am sure Butt's real life experiences as a comic greatly influenced these adventures, and the jokes were pretty darn funny. I loved the characters of Dale and Rynn (Rynn especially) and how well they were written. I did feel the book kind of lost it's footing in the third act. It didn't quite work for me, but of course, results may very.

ndschmidt's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

jessywhale's review

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dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

camstipated's review

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dark funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A solid first effort, but often corny and convenient. Especially near the end, it feels confused and like it was intended to be a movie. An example of the writing style and how it disagreed with me early on is when the van is described as being "bathed" in a purple shade or something - nobody talks like that, just say it was deep purple. It seems like Brent used a synonym generator to try to make his language more flowery.

The comedy was very believable, which makes sense because a famous comedian wrote it. I think I would have honestly liked this book more if it didn't go off the rails with the thriller stuff and just stuck to the comedy tour thing. I'm not going to say that this is a good book, but as a fan of Brent Butt, it's interesting to read this novel as a peak into his mind. However, it somehow made me feel more cynical towards the publishing industry, like he was forced to write a certain way, add chapters to pad the word count, and add scenes that would make a good movie by his publisher.

Overall this is okay, but I don't think I could recommend it. Maybe this is because I mostly read classics, and just came off of reading Cormac McCarthy, one of the great American novelists, but Huge feels strangely infantile and sterile.

markedwithanm's review

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dark funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.25

Content Warnings

ellosippo's review

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4.0

I gave a courtesy half-star because I’m a huge fan of Butt’s. It was good! It wasn’t great. It was interesting. It was predicable. I learned about comedy.

cada's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I really enjoyed this book and devoured it.

Going in I had little expectations, but every time I thought I knew what was going to happen, or that the narrative hit a wall it twisted and went in an unexpected or realistic direction.

That's the underlying tone, the story and characters were written in a way that felt so realistic, it made it more haunting.

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