Half His Age - Half the Payoff and Twice the Disappointment

**Issuing a trigger warning before starting this review, as we discuss themes of grooming and abuse.

I’m late to the game on this novel and didn’t go into it expecting to write a review as there is already so much commentary and opinion surrounding the novel.

However, my main takeaway from this novel is one I haven’t seen echoed elsewhere. Is this a story that needed to be told?

Outside of my love of books, I also follow musical theatre and particularly enjoy commentary and reviews from MickeyJoTheatre. A question he often asks when reviewing stage productions is whether a story actually benefits from being told on stage. And it was that same sentiment that kept coming to mind while I was reading this novel. Did this story need to be told?

To take it back a step to give context, the novel follows Waldo, a seventeen-year-old high school student characterized as independent, lonely, misguided, yet determined. She becomes infatuated with her English teacher, Mr Korgy, a desire that is quickly recognised and reciprocated as the two enter a passionate and intense love affair. While it describes itself in blurb as a rich character study, it doesn’t deliver on that, instead, the pacing and erotic descriptions place it closer to a dark romance, albeit without either the genre expectations or the usual age-appropriateness.

I’ve seen criticism from others about the naming of the characters, but that was actually one of the few aspects of this novel that I found clever. The name Waldo aids her characterization, seemingly unusual compared with most mainstream names, and gives that sense of otherness that we see in this story. There is also a juvenile quality to the name that I think continually reinforces her age to the reader, despite the experiences we are reading her having.

Likewise, Mr Korgy is only ever referred to by Waldo in that exact phrasing. She never calls him by his first name, a choice that equally reinforces the age gap and serves as a constant reminder of his maturity, and position over her.

With that context established, I come back to the question of whether this story needed to be told.

Given the subject matter, it was always going to be an uncomfortable read, however, the discomfort is pushed to the nth degree. The novel is vulgar, descriptive, with often intrusive levels of inner monologue. That raw honesty has worked well in McCurdy’s previous novel ‘I’m Glad My Mom Died’, which is autobiographical but here it feels out of place.

Uncomfortable books can be effective in contexts where they are honing in on a human insight or society itself. Making you uncomfortable, in order to challenge you and provoke reflection. The problem is that this novel doesn’t do that. In fact, it offers very few moments of reflection, and actually ends so abruptly that it left me with little room to think about it beyond the overwhelming relief of it being over.

That is why I ultimately struggled so much. A story about grooming and abuse can absolutely be worth telling. Silencing and accepting such experiences is never the answer. But in this instance, the fictional story and the need to immerse the reader into the experiences alongside Waldo felt wrongly prioritized. It felt too much like normalising that dynamic, than critiquing and condemning it. Perhaps that is why others haven’t strode the path of writing this dynamic into fiction, it is so so tricky to balance fiction-writing against meaningful critique. The answer going forward is instead perhaps relying on non-fiction to tell these stories of real victims, and using that format to provide the reflection this story needed.

There are equally narrative issues beyond the challenging themes. The pacing is incredibly fast, mirroring the structure of books that are designed to be addictive, unputdownable, easy reads. That felt completely at odds with the material as this shouldn’t be a story that is an easy-read.

The novel also takes place in Anchorage, Alaska, but beyond repeatedly naming it, there is little defining features to attribute the story to that location. It could have explored the close-knit social dynamics, and the idea of everyone being in your business that can often come with life in a rural state/community. OR it could have examined the idea of growth, either by the location restricting Waldo’s opportunities to grow, or rather offer a need to escape and grow elsewhere. Instead, Alaska just acted as a descriptive label versus being a core part of the narrative which was a missed opportunity.

All of this combined makes the novel a disappointment as McCurdy is such a talented writer. I’d describe her writing as honest, with a strong ability to construct incredibly real and complex characters. I’d definitely love to read more from her, just hopefully next time with different subject matter that can make her writing shine.

Have you read this novel? I would love to hear others thoughts.

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