Reckoning with the Long Literary Tradition of Age-Gap Relationships

Jennette McCurdy has spent the past few years telling the world her story. The actress became a household name as the comedic sidekick of iCarly, a Nickelodeon sitcom. She was fifteen when the first season aired. For the eight years afterwards, McCurdy kept her family’s finances afloat and endured the most extreme levels of teenage trauma: alcoholism, an eating disorder, abuse. After her mother’s death in 2013, it took McCurdy a little less than a decade to publish her blockbuster memoir about the event and its aftermath; I’m Glad My Mom Died was released to a round of rave reviews, the kind which open a lot of doors if you want to be a writer in earnest.

McCurdy’s second book, Half His Age, was released earlier this year. It is her debut novel, not a memoir, though you might be forgiven for confusing the two; McCurdy has slowly built these little bridges between the book and her own life, certain themes which seem to suggest a developing throughline for her literary career. Half His Age follows Waldo, an independent teenage girl with a complicated relationship to her mother. She doesn’t care much for school, but she loves writing. Her teacher Mr. Korgy takes notice; they soon start a secret, sexual relationship. The novel is frequently painful to read, which I mean as a compliment; sex scenes are graphic, but never gratuitous, focusing on bodily fluids in all their sticky, glooping glory. It’s a deeply personal text. After all, McCurdy has candidly drawn from her own age-gap affair.

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