3.5
The Sixth Form
ByPublisher Description
When seventeen-year-old Ethan Whitley leaves his home in California for Berkley Academy, a prestigious Massachusetts prep school, he's a blank slate, a shy follower of rules in search of himself. Ethan is given the chance to start over when he is hand-picked by his wealthy, disaffected classmate, Todd Eldon, and a seductive, enigmatic teacher, Hannah McClellan, a free spirit for whom rules were meant to be broken.
Life with Todd and Hannah is a revelation, an invitation to a world of privilege and desire. But looming over these heady evenings is the disturbing mystery of Hannah's fragmented past, one that Ethan longs desperately to understand.
As secrets are revealed, Ethan is pulled deep into the undertow of Hannah's history and Todd's longings. Soon, he learns that every deceit has a price, every lie is an ugly truth, and that those he has come to trust are people he doesn't know at all.
"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
"Dolby puts his own prep school experience to fine use in his second novel. . .beautifully observed." --Publishers Weekly
"A tender and funny novel." --David Ebershoff
Life with Todd and Hannah is a revelation, an invitation to a world of privilege and desire. But looming over these heady evenings is the disturbing mystery of Hannah's fragmented past, one that Ethan longs desperately to understand.
As secrets are revealed, Ethan is pulled deep into the undertow of Hannah's history and Todd's longings. Soon, he learns that every deceit has a price, every lie is an ugly truth, and that those he has come to trust are people he doesn't know at all.
"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
"Dolby puts his own prep school experience to fine use in his second novel. . .beautifully observed." --Publishers Weekly
"A tender and funny novel." --David Ebershoff
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Sixth Form Reviews
3.5
“This is actually a good book, although when I first began it I was a little wary of the topic.. now I'm glad I read it. It was interesting and to the point.
It's a coming of age novel about two 17 year old boys who are going to a boarding school in New England, Massachusetts; where they have to battle with alcohol, drugs, family life and sex. The two boys both come from very different backgrounds, one, Todd, is from a broken family. His parents are divorced and his mother is a now a very wealthy author. The other, Ethan, is from California where his parents are still married and live simple lives.
The subject matter of this book was really what I was wary of. At the risk of sounding narrow-minded, I wasn't and still am not interested in reading about homosexual intercourse. Thankfully, Dolby didn't write as graphically as some authors do; he wrote simply the events leading up to the act and the events following.
It was shocking that the parents in this novel were so accepting of the consumption of drugs and alcohol. They barely raised an eyebrow, except for Ethan's parents who live a more structured lifestyle.
Ethan is an interesting character. He's a very good student who mostly keeps to himself and has few friends. He gets trapped in a relationship he doesn't quite understand and he isn't able to get out of it.
Todd is also an interesting character, he's a boy who's got it all. Looks, wealth and most of all connections. He has to deal with something that makes him uncomfortable, something he wishes, at first, that he could change.
Hannah McClellan is a school teacher who has returned to Berkley boarding school. She is quite the character, with troubles that I never could've imagined from the beginning. I was truly surprised by all the deceit she was capable of.. and to what lengths she would go to keep something she really wanted.
All in all, it was a really well written novel.. worth the read :)”
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