This is my first Sally Rooney, and it was genuinely unlike any book I've read before. Extremely challenging to get into the unusual writing style initially (yes it's true, multipov stream of consciousness, with no quotes for conversations to be found), but I was able to get into the rhythm surprisingly quickly. With that done, I was completely swept away by the characters and the story. Each POV was so distinct and in its own ways so compelling, and the relationships between our little cast of characters as well as the characters themselves had me feeling an unbelievable range of emotions from finding them endearing to infuriating. The one word somehow coming to mind to describe this book is "sincere." There's just such an honesty captured in these pages that is so gripping even when disagreeable. It embraces rather than shys away from the unpleasantness of awkward topics and numerous heavy themes, and I just found it all so fascinating and human. I'd pick up another work by Rooney in a heartbeat.

This was a phenomenal debut novel from Jennette McCurdy. An unflinching exploration of the coming-of-age of a teenage girl desperate to be seen and known and feel connected, and ready to use every tool she's got at her disposal to make that happen.

For those that have already read McCurdy's memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died, you can expect to see her voice come through just as strongly here, and many of her own experiences too. I find that an author self inserting aspects of their own lives into a fictional story can be extremely hit or miss (usually, miss), but McCurdy does an excellent job in allowing her firsthand knowledge to keep the story grounded and painfully realistic, but still giving enough room to let the MC be her own character rather than an extension of McCurdy. Things were a little clunky here and a little heavy handed there (one complaint is the setting never made sense to me and was a little distracting), but generally hugely impressive for a first time fictional work.

One of the things I found most enjoyable as I read was what I'm now thinking of as McCurdy's signature writing style, which blends shocking content with simplistic prose. It's bold and it's abrasive and visceral and gross and honest and somehow also quiet. She calls things as they are, and lets them be as they are. That alongside the short chapters makes the reading experience so refreshing, but though the read is easy on a technical level, it's certainly not easy on an emotional one.

There's a remarkable amount of depth right below the surface of this book; reach in, and be left to grapple with some searing questions on society and the human condition. What does it mean to discover that your body and sexuality can actually be used as currency, a tool, a weapon? What messages, spoken and unspoken, do we internalize from our parents? Can enough consumerism make us new? Is everything we want worth chasing? Is desire always what you think it is, and will getting what you desire satisfy you? Does what we want define us? How do we figure out what we deserve from others and from ourselves? Who holds the power in a relationship, and when, and why? And so on.

This book had me riding an emotional rollercoaster, rooting for Waldo and scared for (or even of) her, feeling the discomfort of seeing echos of myself and my friends, at times angry, at times laughing, and honestly ending off pretty exhausted. But I'd definitely say the ride was worth it, and I absolutely look forward to what McCurdy will serve up next.

An acerbic, unflinching commentary on the messy, cavernous laceration of girlhood.

Half His Age is a story about feminine rage, but not the screaming, crying, throwing dishes kind. It's the quiet aftermath. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, staring at your mascara-streaked tear stains in the mirror as the last scrap of imagined power drains out of you, feeling hollow and slightly humiliated as you settle into the realization that you're trapped in a cycle that you can't quite name.

It's a story about agency, and lack thereof. How systems and cycles outside of our control force us into survival, force us into clawing for anything that brings relief, anything that we can latch onto for control, anything to satiate the empty feeling we don't want to address. Even when we know it's not good for us, we cling to it anyway.

It's a brutally realistic portrayal of a girl parentified, who learned early on that being chosen and being loved meant self-abandonment, meant playing a role, meant picking up the pieces of everyone around her even if it meant falling apart.

Each chapter is told like a snapshot memory, focusing in on a single detail as it zooms out to capture the scene in its entirety. McCurdy's writing is raw and full of a clarity that demands rapt attention. The short chapters mean that every word matters, every symbol is packed with meaning, every moment is layered with threads begging to be unraveled.

The narrative centers entirely on Waldo's inner monologue to a claustrophobic degree. Her inner state seesaws between numb cynicism and frantic, all-consuming anxiety. Many of her thoughts are twisted reflections of the harsh lessons learned through parentification, through cultural conditioning and societal expectation. In every moment, Waldo's emotional state is almost unbearably palpable. She's unreliable but legible, impulsive but empathetic.

Your eyes want to look away, to spare her from having witnesses to her dysfunction, but behind it is a low-grade hum of resignation as you feel the inevitability coming toward you in every choice she makes. Yet your heart wants to keep watching, propelled forward by clinging to the tiniest shred of hope that she might hit a wall, wake up, and escape the cycle. Because if Waldo can escape the cycle, it might mean that you can, too.

Threaded through Waldo's experience are McCurdy's ruminations on systems that tear away the agency of women and girls. Capitalism that forces us into competition, consumerism that sells us products to fix issues invented by the market, patriarchy that teaches us that being chosen by a man is the ultimate form of salvation. That if we look and act just so, and buy the right products to get us there, and consume the right content that makes us one nudge better than the girls around us, we might get lucky enough to be chosen, to mean something, to matter.

It examines the idea of desire from a feminine perspective, its imposed limitations and expectations. The false sense of agency that women are given by performing sexuality, because it's the only place their needs and desires can be contained without being minimized, ridiculed, or dismissed.

Deeply uncomfortable, intentional, and wrapped in rough edges and messy choices that don't ask for forgiveness, just a witness.

I received an ALC of this title in exchange for an honest review.