Half His Age - BoundCovers

Hardcover, 288 pages

English language

Published by Doubleday Canada.

ISBN:: 978-0-385-69782-8

(1 review)

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of I’m Glad My Mom Died comes a sad, funny, thrilling novel about sex, consumerism, class, desire, loneliness, the internet, rage, intimacy, power, and the (oftentimes misguided) lengths we’ll go to in order to get what we want.

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 …

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of I’m Glad My Mom Died comes a sad, funny, thrilling novel about sex, consumerism, class, desire, loneliness, the internet, rage, intimacy, power, and the (oftentimes misguided) lengths we’ll go to in order to get what we want.

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.

Startlingly perceptive, mordantly funny, and keenly poignant, Half His Age is a rich character study of a yearning seventeen-year-old who disregards all obstacles—or attempts to overcome them—in her effort to be seen, to be desired, to be loved.

3 editions

Spamsammich reviewed Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy

Valuable and Powerful

5 stars

So hard to find a book that delves into the mind of a teenaged girl without judgement or moralizing. A raw look at the struggles of life that compound with misogyny, poverty, isolation, and the raw human realness inside all of us. I really loved this book. I adore McCurdy's ability to detangle the complicated nature of messy human reality, her ability to give us characters who are illogical and damaged while forcing us to acknowledge their humanity and worth. This is a deeply humanizing novel, one of the rare gems that take a teenage girl and tell her story without the hate or judgement or vitriol about her nature. A book that exposes the struggle of immaturity and the difficulties of growing up in this world without a support system.