Jennette McCurdy’s debut novel, “Half His Age,” provides an insightful, gripping and angry observation into the power dynamics and desires of a forbidden teenage fantasy. Known primarily for her childhood roles on Nickelodeon, McCurdy gained traction in 2022 following her retirement from acting for her memoir, “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” a deep and personal glance into her struggles with a complicated maternal relationship and ongoing grapples with mental illness. “Half His Age” is McCurdy’s second book and first piece of fiction.
“Half His Age” follows the story of 17-year-old Waldo, a rage-filled and often blunt high school student who finds herself yearning desperately to be wanted and seen in a relationship. Unfortunately, she manifests these aspirations into a wild fantasy for the only man she believes could live up to the authentic connection she craves: her creative writing teacher, Mr. Korgy. While Waldo sees Korgy’s less-than-desirable features, including a growing bald spot and noticeable beer belly — alongside his wife and child at home, she can’t help but feel entranced by his authentic way of seeing the world. The dreams, goals and experiences he depicts while teaching hardly hold a candle to the few adolescent boys Waldo had previously experimented with, and her lust quickly moves to obsession.
As the novel progresses, Waldo finds herself not only entangled in a nefarious affair with her teacher, but in a constant battle with aggressive consumerism, a neglectful mother, an absentee father, a lackluster — and rather one-sided — friendship, navigating the challenges of social media and an overall lack of adult figures within her life. With all of these challenges in mind, she presents as a rather unlikable and objectively frustrating character who simultaneously provokes disdain and sympathy while reading.
While reading McCurdy’s novel, I found myself unsettled, disturbed, often mildly nauseated and ultimately unable to put it down. I read the book in a single sitting, and while I didn’t necessarily enjoy its contents, the message behind the plot is important and telling to its audience. Several scenes are quite graphic and refrain from holding back — I’d recommend glancing at trigger warnings before reading — and yet I truly feel that I experienced every emotion McCurdy intended to provoke in her writing: anger, annoyance, desperation, sympathy and simply rage. While Waldo is a frustrating character, who I regularly wanted to yell at through the pages to advise to make better choices, she is accurately raw, impulsive and merely looking out for herself.
A slight critique I hold for the novel is the lack of follow-through and closure in its ending. While McCurdy is likely aiming to leave readers with a sense of curiosity toward Waldo’s final actions, it felt like several loose threads were left at the end of a major buildup for multiple plot lines. Although I appreciate the sense of suspense and leaving the ending up to the imagination in some regards, I wish a bit more rounding out of the story could have taken place before its closure at fewer than 300 pages.
As a whole, McCurdy brilliantly places her reader into the shoes of a quippy, adolescent protagonist within a student-teacher relationship who, despite being a victim of the modern atrocities of neglect, consumerism and manipulation, believes she has full control of her life. “Half His Age” is a startling and poignant read with important yet gross subject matter. While often off-putting and blunt, I believe it is entirely worth the read.
