On the Shelf
Half His Age
By Jennette McCurdyBallantine Books: 288 pages, $30
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Jennette McCurdy’s cellphone couldn’t be silenced.
After the discharge of her 2022 memoir, “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” the actress-turned-author obtained an endless barrage of messages and calls from associates, household, distant acquaintances, individuals she’d crossed paths with one time when she was 12 years previous.
“I heard from everybody I’ve ever met. Everybody came out of the woodwork,” McCurdy stated. Whereas a lot of the messages had been optimistic, she added, “I have changed my phone number a few times since then. I like to keep my inner circle pretty close now.”
Her memoir was a uncooked, unflinching take a look at her childhood spent tethered to an abusive mom, her private battles with consuming problems and alcohol, her tumultuous teenage years as a Nickelodeon star on the sitcoms “iCarly” and “Sam & Cat” and her recalibration within the wake of her mom’s loss of life from most cancers when McCurdy was 21.
Its readership went far past McCurdy’s cellphone contacts. “I’m Glad My Mom Died” was a bona fide phenomenon. It bought greater than 3 million copies and spent greater than 80 weeks on the New York Occasions Greatest Vendor listing. And it’s at the moment within the technique of being tailored into an Apple TV+ collection starring Jennifer Aniston as McCurdy’s mom.
Now, McCurdy, who’s 33, is trying to inform a brand new story with the January launch of her debut novel “Half His Age.” The insular, visceral story follows Waldo, a teenage lady in Alaska who has a sexual relationship together with her middle-aged, married English instructor.
If some readers had been aghast on the title of McCurdy’s memoir or its contents, they’ll virtually actually balk at “Half His Age,” which is a thorny exploration of energy, lust, disgrace and rage, written in McCurdy’s now-signature wry type. The e-book’s cowl includes a close-up {photograph} of a younger girl (not McCurdy) sucking her center finger, and the intercourse scenes inside are unvarnished, uncomfortable and plentiful.
“I’m never writing something that’s intentionally provocative, and I’m certainly never writing anything for shock value,” McCurdy stated. “I really try to write for truth, and I can’t help it if that’s shocking. I can’t help it if that’s noisy or alarming. In fact, if it is those things, that’s probably an indication that there is some truth there and a conversation that’s needed to be had.”
After we met for our interview at a Pasadena restaurant in December, McCurdy appeared virtually similar to after I’d interviewed her there in 2022, earlier than the discharge of her memoir — darkish blond, tousled curls atop a petite body and a broad smile. However a granular shift appears to have occurred. Nervous laughter has been changed by a calmer confidence. Her eyes sparkle just a little brighter.
The success of McCurdy’s memoir cemented her standing as a author, a title she prized far above “former child actor” or “TV star.” Authors she’d lengthy admired, like Maria Semple and Tom Perrotta, now learn and reward her writing. McCurdy even spent Thanksgiving with Semple final yr.
“It’s this sense of belonging that I’ve always craved and never quite felt,” she stated. “All through my 20s I thought, ‘Well, I’m just losing my tribe. I don’t know where my people are.’ I have found my people through writing in the past three years.”
It’s been a very long time coming. After shifting away from performing — a profession that had been thrust upon her by her mom at simply 6 years previous — McCurdy started to furiously commit herself to writing within the mid-2010s. At first, she immersed herself in a wide range of lessons round L.A. She tried sketch writing, late-night TV writing, spec writing, however she shortly discovered she didn’t really wish to write sketches or late-night monologues. As a substitute, she began to give attention to longer-form storytelling through essays, her memoir, novels and screenplays.
Not less than six days every week for the final decade, McCurdy stated, she’s spent her waking hours scribbling on a laptop computer inside her Pasadena dwelling, rotating from her desk to the kitchen counter to the sofa to the eating desk to the veranda and again once more.
“I sort of write until I’m tired. Sometimes that’s 4 p.m. and sometimes that’s 8 p.m.,” she stated. “This year, specifically, I’ve pulled the longest days of my life. I had many days that were until 2 in the morning. It was really, really intense.”
“Half His Age” first started percolating when McCurdy was 24, driving a bullet prepare on a solo journey in Japan. She’d by no means written a e-book at that time, however the concept of a novel with a 17-year-old protagonist concerned in an age-gap relationship cemented itself at the back of her mind. Years later, after the discharge of her memoir, she felt compelled to lastly see it by means of.
“It forced itself upon me. You know, when authors say words like, ‘There was no other choice than to write this thing,’ I always thought it sounded a little pretentious,” she stated. “Now, I completely know what it means. Waldo, this protagonist, her voice — I was waking up in the middle of the night thinking of this character.”
Though McCurdy stated she considers herself an emotional author, some parts of “Half His Age” required extra exacting analysis. Setting a narrative in a public highschool when she herself had solely been homeschooled and tutored on set, for instance, was a problem.
“I was literally looking up, ‘Do they still have lockers in high school? What is a typical layout of a high school?’” she stated.
Elsewhere, she imbued the story with parts of familiarity: Waldo has related unruly curls to McCurdy’s; Waldo’s greatest buddy is Mormon, the faith during which McCurdy was raised; and Waldo lives in Anchorage, the place McCurdy’s associate of 9 years is from, and the place McCurdy stated she has spent many months.
She additionally gave Waldo a sophisticated, absentee mom determine who leaves Waldo to shoulder the obligations of the family together with her paychecks from a part-time job at a Victoria’s Secret. (On a distinct scale, McCurdy was the breadwinner for her family by the point she was a young person.)
“I think I’ll always write mother-daughter dynamics, and really any family dynamics, in a complicated, messy way. I’ve tried to write other kinds of dynamics, and my body will freeze up,” she stated. “If I’m trying to write a loving, supportive, validating, parental figure, that’s not my experience. I don’t know how to begin to write that.”
“I really try to write for truth, and I can’t help it if that’s shocking. I can’t help it if that’s noisy or alarming,” stated creator Jennette McCurdy.
(Victoria Stevens)
However past these particulars, McCurdy has a deep connection to the e-book’s central storyline: McCurdy’s first severe relationship, which she detailed in her memoir, occurred when she was a naïve 18-year-old with an “iCarly” crew member who was in his mid-30s.
“There’s certainly overlap,” she stated. “There’s certainly influence there. Writing, for me, is a means of finding closure where maybe there wasn’t in my own life. It’s a means of finding meaning and empowerment in places where maybe I didn’t feel it so much. It’s a way of exploring things that I maybe haven’t fully processed myself.”
She added, “I kept thinking, ‘Why is this coming through? Why is this the book that I’m writing?’ Several drafts in, I realized, ‘Oh, it’s because I have a lot of unprocessed rage about this.’ Of course, it’s a piece of fiction, and there are plenty of deviations, but, ultimately, I have a really personal connection to it, coming from that place myself.”
Rage is one thing she expects many feminine readers to really feel as they observe Waldo’s journey in “Half His Age.”
“We’re taught to be polite and nice and make everybody around us feel comfortable and take the high road,” McCurdy stated, her voice catching. “My experience of rage is that the more I have connected with it, the more it has led me on an effective life path, the more it has led me to make choices that I had been needing to make for a long time.”
These selections have resulted in McCurdy not solely turning into a outstanding creator, however an individual totally in command of their profession for the primary time. She is at the moment engaged on her subsequent e-book, and she or he has already written a script for a movie adaptation of “Half His Age,” which she will even direct “if all the pieces fall into place,” she stated.
The upcoming collection adaptation of “I’m Glad My Mom Died” was equally one thing McCurdy was solely snug with if she may keep on the helm. She and Ari Katcher will function co-showrunners. She wrote all 10 episodes, she stated, and can direct a number of episodes, as effectively.
“I am not interested in my stories being taken into somebody else’s hands,” she stated. “That would be offensive to me.”
McCurdy is not going to seem on display screen, nonetheless, and she or he stated it’s too early to debate who will play youthful variations of herself. In the meantime, Aniston’s connection to the fabric — the veteran actress has stated that she and McCurdy “had very similar moms” — was key to casting her within the matriarch function.
“She does relate a lot to the material,” McCurdy stated of Aniston. “It would be a disservice to the heart and soul of this book, and a disservice to the deep connection millions of people have with it, for anybody to be a part of it for any other reason. I’m deeply protective of it.”
As we completed up our mid-afternoon meal — a hodgepodge of spicy tuna bites and asparagus fries paired with guava and berry mocktails — McCurdy mirrored on the company she is lastly in a position to take.
“I didn’t feel that I had a voice with, really, any aspect of my life growing up. I felt kind of voiceless,” she stated. “Writing was where I found my voice, and I think, as a result of that, found my power.”
Spencer is an L.A.-based tradition author and reporter. Her nonfiction e-book, “Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel’s Tween Empire,” is out now.
