Half His Age

Half His Age is a highly anticipated, funny, sad, thrilling novel about sex, class, desire, and power – and the (often misguided) lengths we’ll go to to get what we want, from Jennette McCurdy, the three-million copy bestselling author of I'm Glad My Mom Died.

Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Hurting. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of all? Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher.

Mr Korgy, 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 that she doesn’t? Or are they actually kindred spirits, sharing the same 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 an incisive study of a yearning seventeen-year-old who disregards all obstacles in her effort to be seen, to be desired and to be loved.

Review

‘Eerie and unsettling and believable’ Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl

'Absolute dynamite. I could not stop reading until I had devoured it whole' Elizabeth Day, author of One of Us

'A bleak, hilarious and uncomfortable triumph. Underscores McCurdy’s talent for focusing in on the multilayered nature of trauma and artfully unpicking it, one scab at a time’ Guardian

‘A postmodern novel for the fast-fashion generation and a portrait of civilizational decline told through relentless consumption. McCurdy’s brittle commentary made me think of Don DeLillo [and her] furious writing is hard to tear yourself away from.’ The Atlantic

‘A bold and unapologetic novel for edge-seekers, doom-scrollers, latchkey kids, horn-dogs and all those who love hard’ Brittany Newell in the New York Times

‘Shocking, honest and unsparing. A sardonic voice, finely tuned to the push and pull of tragedy and humour' Sunday Times Style

‘A beadily intelligent novel. Waldo is a brilliant creation, and I hope McCurdy makes the transition to novelist a permanent one’ The Times

'Thought-provoking and shocking, darkly comic and witty' Independent

'Dark, raw, funny and razor-sharp' Red Magazine

'Jennette McCurdy writes sentences that glimmer and cut like razors. This novel is uncomfortable, unpredictable, and unputdownable' Aria Aber, author of Good Girl

'A riveting examination of lust and self-delusion. McCurdy is a fearless and darkly funny writer with an unerring eye for the perfect mortifying detail' Tom Perrotta, author of Election

About the Author

Jennette McCurdy is the Sunday Times bestselling author of I’m Glad My Mom Died, winner of the 2023 American Library Association Alex Award and the 2022 Goodreads Choice Award for Memoir & Autobiography. The book has been published in more than thirty countries and has sold more than three million copies. McCurdy is creating, writing, executive producing, and showrunning an Apple TV+ series loosely inspired by I’m Glad My Mom Died, starring Jennifer Aniston. Half His Age is her debut novel.