Press & Reviews
“Dolby puts his own prep school experience to fine use in his second novel...beautifully observed...[The novel is] a reminder how close disaster always is when you’re 17.”
-Publisher's Weekly
“Dolby has made a point of not playing to obviousness in the book...[W]ith Sixth Form, you'll know him for his words...Tom Dolby is making a name for himself.”
-The San Francisco Chronicle
“Glossy and smooth...will be honey to prep school series fans.”
-The Chicago Sun Times
“[A] tasty, well-written winter read for your inner preppie. It’s like Hogwarts, minus the magic and fey headmaster.”
-Instinct
“As ever, Tom Dolby writes with compassion and wit.”
-CBS, "Eye on the Bay" (San Francisco)
“Dolby's second novel is a riveting coming-of-age love triangle...This story of inchoate emotion and confused passion takes a well-worked theme -- boyish self-discovery -- and transforms it...[I]t's a minor masterpiece that universalizes the messy mystery of young love, straight and gay alike.”
-"Book Marks" (syndicated column)
“Set at the fictional Berkley Academy, a prestigious prep school in Massachusetts...[the novel] is a coming-of-age story that deals universally with themes of adolescent angst and uncertainty.”
-The East Hampton Star
“[The Sixth Form was] well worth the wait...heart is definitely something Dolby’s novels have in spades.”
-Queerty.com
“Tom Dolby beautifully demonstrates the brief illusions and the temporary connections that can exist between people.”
-CurledUp.com
“Since his much lauded 2004 debut novel, The Trouble Boy, author Tom Dolby has continued to surprise and delight readers...[In The Sixth Form], Dolby creates a fascinating coming-of-age novel set in a world of privilege inspired by his personal experiences in a New England boarding school over a decade ago.”
-ChicagoPride.com
“A serious examination of how a New England prep school turns boys into men.”
-Frontiers
“In [the novel], Dolby takes us to a New England prep school for a carefully modulated story of the friendship between a New York cool kid and a shy California boy.”
-Bay Windows (Boston)
“Riveting.”
-In Newsweekly
“Written with assurance, nuance, and compassion, Tom Dolby's The Sixth Form is a classic coming-of-age story about two boys, at first surprised by how different they are from each other's perceptions, and ultimately surprised by how different they are from their own self-perceptions. Woven into this narrative is a gripping suspense story that evokes Donna Tartt's The Secret History and makes the book very difficult to put down. These are rich, developed characters, and there is much insight here into the nature of adolescence and the lonely and ambivalent workings of the heart as it first awakens to love.”
-Andrew Solomon,
National Book Award Winner and New York Times bestselling author of The Noonday Demon
“In the tradition of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, with just the right hint of Tom Brown's Schooldays, Dolby gives us a glimpse into the rarefied world of elite New England boarding schools and manages at the same time to say something new about adolescence, sexuality, and the way art can give us what we need to survive.”
-Ayelet Waldman,
author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
“The Sixth Form is a tender and funny novel about that messy period of our lives—high school senior year. Tom Dolby captures all the embarrassing moments, all the pent-up desires, all the errors of judgment with empathy and wit.”
-David Ebershoff,
author of The Danish Girl and Pasadena
“Reminiscent of A Separate Peace, Tom Dolby deftly explores the outer world of privilege and education and the inner world of adolescent emerging identity. Writing with compassion and authority, he charts the necessary, frequently heart-wrenching, always baffling trajectory of moving from innocence to experience.”
-Madeline Levine, Ph.D,
New York Times bestselling author of
The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids
