Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy\u2019s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she\u2019s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria\u2019s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has \u201cthinning hair and nose pores\u201d; he\u2019s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless\u2014or possibly as a result?\u2014Waldo\u2019s attraction to him is \u201cinstant. So sudden it\u2019s alarming. So palpable it\u2019s confusing.\u201d Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school\u2019s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy\u2019s bestselling memoir, I\u2019m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel\u2019s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (\u201cI want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.\u201d) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, \u201cThe words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn\u2019t have said them.\u201d Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren\u2019t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy\u2019s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she\u2019s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria\u2019s Secret […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}