Whatever you might think you're going to get from the familiar setup of Jennette McCurdy's Half His Age (a lonely high-school girl in Anchorage begins an extremely questionable sexual relationship with her teacher), any presumptions are dispelled from the very first page. When Waldo, the teenage narrator of the novel, observes her boyfriend's 'slimy tongue that loop-de-loops over and over like a carnival ride, mechanical and passionless,' she's setting a tone: irreverent, graphic, bilious. McCurdy is much more interested in late capitalism than in Lolita. Waldo's world has long been poisoned by the microwavable meals her disinterested mother leaves out, the fast-fashion crop tops she orders that come with a cancer warning, the laptop she falls asleep clutching at 2 a.m., its unnatural heat 'searing my ovaries.' By the time she meets Mr. Korgy, her frowsy middle-aged creative-writing instructor, on page 11, she is already imprinted on the reader as a caustic force of anti-nature. And...
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