<p><b>Teenage misfits and adolescent rabble-rousing take center stage in this dark coming-of-age tale</b><i></i><br><i></i><br><i>Big Kids</i> is simultaneously Michael DeForge's most straightforward narrative and his most complex work to date. It follows a troubled teenage boy through the transformative years of high school as he redefines his friends, his interests, and his life path. When the boy's uncle, a police officer, gets kicked out of the family's basement apartment and transferred to the countryside, April moves in. She's a college student, mysterious and cool, and she quickly takes a shine to the boy.</p><p>The boy's own interests quickly fade away: he stops engaging in casual sex, taking drugs, and testing the limits of socially acceptable (and legal) behavior. Instead, he hangs out with April and her friends, a bunch of highly evolved big kids who spend their days at the campus swimming pool. And slowly, the boy begins to change, too.</p><p>Eerie and perfectly paced, DeForge's <i>Big Kids </i>muses on the complicated, and often contradictory, feelings people struggle with during adolescence, the choices we make to fit in, and the ways we survive times of change. Like<i>Ant Colony </i>and <i>First Year Healthy</i>, <i>Big Kids</i> is a testimony to the harshness and beauty of being alive.</p>