“Maybe wanting things is what makes me a lot. If I could just want less, I’d be the right amount of person. The amount I’m supposed to be. The not-a-lot amount. The easy-to-love amount,” (McCurdy 6).
Seventeen-year-old Waldo is in love with her middle-aged Creative Writing teacher Mr. Korgy and she doesn’t know why. Is it his passion for writing? His honesty about where life has taken him? Or does he just see Waldo when no one else does? Not her mother, not her best friend Frannie, not any of the boys her age that she sleeps with, but him. And Waldo will do anything to get his attention.
Half His Age is one of the most anticipated books of the year, and like many readers I was just as eager to read Jennette McCurdy’s fiction debut. I loved her memoir and think she has a great voice, but how would that translate into fiction writing?
I’ll start by saying that I think McCurdy is a good writer. I liked Waldo’s voice and I think that some of her descriptions are very unique and really pull readers into the uncomfortable choices that Waldo is making. I think McCurdy also does a great job in this book of making a commentary on internet usage and consumerism, how both are a finger click away and how our growing dependency on both causes isolation and searching for improper outlets as a way to fix this loneliness. I think McCurdy is juggling a lot of different critiques here, but since we are in the head of a seventeen-year-old protagonist we never really get into any deep insight into why this happening, we are voyeurs watching, making our own inferences.
There has been a lot of criticism about Half His Age, many of it I think unwarranted. People are uncomfortable with the graphic nature of the sex scenes in the book and people don’t like how self-centered Waldo is as a narrator, and I don’t think either of those criticisms are fair. I think the sex scenes are meant to be uncomfortable and gross because they are taking place between a seventeen-year-old girl and a forty-year-old man, that while Waldo may be getting pleasure in these instances she is not able to recognize the wrongness of the situation she is in. And again, Waldo is seventeen, she’s self-centered because she’s a teenager, because many teenagers mindsets are inward but that doesn’t mean they are bad people. On top of that, Waldo is a traumatized teen, which doesn’t excuse her behaviour but does explain it. I will say that I wasn’t a fan of her mom’s voice. Waldo’s mom speaks near identical to how McCurdy writes her own mom’s voice in her memoir, and since Waldo’s mom is canonically thirty-four, it just didn’t sound right. It sounded like Waldo’s mom was much older than she actually was.
While there are many parts of Half His Age I enjoyed I don’t think it’s a particularly brilliant book. I like what McCurdy is doing and think that she really nailed Waldo’s voice, but do I think this book would have gotten published had McCurdy not written a best-selling memoir? No, or not right away. I think this book could have used a few edits, that even with a few re-writes this book could have been something brilliant. But publishing is a business, and McCurdy proved herself to be successful so why not publish a debut fiction novel on the coattails of a memoir? Again, she’s not a bad writer, but I don’t think many other writers would get the type of deals that McCurdy is getting.
Half His Age is a good start into fiction for McCurdy, though I hope she works on fixing the voice of her maternal characters in future works. I love the descriptions and think she has a great future for fiction and non-fiction writing, I just hope her agent and publishers remember that even a celebrity’s work can benefit from another edit.
Publication: January 20 2026
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Pages: 288 pages (Hardcover)
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤.75
Summary:
Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Forceful. Hurting. Perceptive. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of all: Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher with the wife and the kid and the mortgage and the bills, with the dead dreams and the atrophied looks and the growing paunch. She doesn’t know why she wants him. Is it his passion? His life experience? The fact that he knows books and films and things that she doesn’t? Or is it purer than that, rooted in their unlikely connection, their kindred spirits, the similar filter with which they each take in the world around them? Or, perhaps, it’s just enough that he sees her when no one else does.
Sarah O'Connor 