Editorial Content for Half His Age

Jennette McCurdy, who starred in Nickelodeon’s “iCarly” and “Sam & Cat,” wrote a memoir in 2022 that garnered a lot of praise. I’M GLAD MY MOM DIED was about her awful, pushy mom and their myriad issues as she became a teen celebrity with great comedic chops. However, behind the scenes, she was the victim of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

McCurdy is back with her first novel, HALF HIS AGE, which is based on a situation in which she found herself as a teen --- being groomed and sexually abused in a May-December relationship that forever has marked her a damaged young woman. This story is her revenge.

"I have to say that the pornographic parts of this novel made me as uncomfortable as [McCurdy] wants every reader to feel.... This is a first-person wail of anger into a void that could exist in this world or any other."

I have had issues with abuse, but I cannot compare myself to McCurdy. I have to say that the pornographic parts of this novel made me as uncomfortable as she wants every reader to feel. She’s using her press junket to stress that the book isn’t funny, cozy or cute, and it isn’t written from the groomer’s point of view, like LOLITA was. It’s about a child who has been sexualized early and learned horrible ideas about love, marriage and relationships from the confused and angry men and women around her, especially her parents and the adults who were supposed to be her protectors.

In HALF HIS AGE, a 17-year-old high school senior falls for her sad sack of a teacher and begins an affair with him that alters both of their lives. Our narrator, Waldo, tells us in insanely specific and sexual language how her relationship with Mr. Korgy unfolds --- from the strained start to the full-on “could we make this work?” to the surprise ending that wraps up the book like an Emerald Fennell film. It’s a shocker, to say the least, but not that shocking perhaps by virtue of Waldo’s confessional narrative ability.

Waldo is self-aware --- full of insight and confusion, boldness and anger --- and only takes a little of the latter out on her well-meaning best friend from childhood, a Christian girl with a steady boyfriend who belongs to today’s trad wife generation. The juxtaposition of the world of Waldo and her love-hungry mom with the typical suburban marriage of every other couple here --- especially Mr. Korgy and his wife, Gwen --- gives the book a tennis match sort of feeling, turning the reader’s head from the life of one side of the tracks to the other in a small town.

How Waldo manages to keep what she’s doing a secret from not only her mom and friend but also the boys she tries to date in a more appropriate fashion is where the story stretches its bounds. However, this is not an average suburb as the setting is Anchorage, Alaska. Although out of the way, it seems like the novel is taking place anywhere in the country. To be more specific would have added a whole level of tension to what is going on due to the particulars of the weather and the environs, but McCurdy doesn’t seem to be interested in extending the narrative. This is a first-person wail of anger into a void that could exist in this world or any other.

Mr. Korgy is a schlub who wants to change his life but can’t muster up the energy until he comes to accept his untoward feelings for Waldo and act on them. He’s an easy target, and through her eyes, he goes from savior and confidante to something much more typical.

Jennette McCurdy uses her anger to fuel an old tale with some very new tricks. It will be interesting to see where she goes from here and if she can give her stories some greater depth as she adapts them for the screen. HALF HIS AGE is perhaps half of what McCurdy is capable of doing as a storyteller.