Sixth Form [Paperback]

Framing his story around the legendary fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, Tom Dolby's The Sixth Form is about how two young men cope with pivotal moments in their lives as they come of age in a world where only people pretend to be kind. An artistically gifted and somewhat tentative boy, Ethan Whitley is suddenly given the opportunity to study at the prestigious Berkley Academy in Connecticut.

Both academics, Ethan's parents encourage their son to take the offer, as this is a perfect opportunity for Ethan to take a break from the burdens of his family, especially from his mother who is sick with cancer, her illness enveloping their lives. Thus Ethan travels to Connecticut with the best of intentions, endeavoring to settle into this new life of dorm rooms and nightly curfews, seeking refuge in the cool calm of the art studios, amidst the smells of dried paint and eraser shavings.

Unwilling to adopt the mainstream, Ethan is a babe in the woods, seemingly eager to experience all that life at the Berkley Academy has to offer. At first, Ethan is intimidated by this rarified world where people make witty remarks to each other, and no one worries too much about money or popularity or sex. He's shocked, therefore to find himself striking up a friendship with Todd Eldon, a wealthy New Yorker, who one night bursts into Ethan's room, and asks him to summarize the weeks reading, the first section of Jane Eyre.

The friendship flourishes with the pair forming a friendly solidarity, their relationship coming to symbolize the coming together of two mismatched young men. Everything that Ethan knows of Todd makes him feel inadequate and he's furthermore in awe of Todd's older brother Brian who had also gone to Berkley. Ethan is the blank slate, a cipher, "the one who was a bit too suspect, a bit too well read and a bit too smug, and he sees his new friend as the type who exists in books or movies, or his imagination, who has everything a teenager wants, " friends, a girlfriend, as much money has he needs. Ethan wants what Todd has, not only emotionally, but also physically in the deepest most visceral part of him.

When Todd talks Ethan into traveling into town to score some dope at the local café, Ethan meets the beautiful teacher Hannah McClellan, who flatters the boy over his short stories and invites him to come visit her at her cottage just down the path from the Academy. Falling under the spell of this woman whom he barely knows, but can so quickly dissect his personality, Ethan spends an afternoon with Hannah where she makes him lunch and then asks him to do some work for her, cataloguing her vast library of books.

Quickly seduced by two of them, Ethan is thrust into a brave new world of sex and affluence, as both Hannah and Todd begin to peddle their influence, acting out their innermost desires with impunity. Todd invites Ethan to spend a weekend in New York with his wealthy and famous Mother, the trip masking Todd's ever increasing sexual attraction to his friend. Hannah, meanwhile becomes ever more lush and angelic and full of mystery, Ethan's affair with her allowing him to feel as though he's sprawling forward in a great parade of possibilities.

Hannah seems oblivious to her indiscrete behaviour with Ethan, she seems more concerned with looking out for her own best interests and her own version of love, and of her own selfish protection for Todd and Ethan. Unmindful of the warnings of others, Ethan becomes ever more seduced by her world: the gift card with the word love sprawled on it, her blueberry cobbler, a book of Rimbaud's poems, and drinking hot chocolate by candlelight.

Like Hansel and Gretel, enticed by the witch with good food, warm beds and the promise of happiness, Ethan takes Hannah at her word even as he senses she's like a snake waiting for the right time to strike. Ethan, Todd and Hannah circle around each other, desperately acting out their longings and innermost needs with each other while Dolby beautifully demonstrates the brief illusions and the temporary connections that can exist between people, connections that can irrevocably alter their lives.

Throughout the course of the story Ethan and Todd learn the hard lesson that the core of what makes a person can be so different from what is first imagined. Of course all is destined to doom and failure when the affair reaches a crescendo, culminating in Ethan leaning some bizarre rumors about Hannah, the events that happened when she lived in France, even as Todd thinks all the gossip is just a late-night drunken rumor.

The end result is an unforgettable climax in a book that skillfully weaves the age of virtuousness with the realities of sexual ambiguity. Ethan and Todd's time in the sixth form is certainly one of growth, but this growth also comes at a price when they both are forced, reluctantly, to navigate the rocky waters of sex and love, their lives both spinning out of control, moving from the thrillingly new to the familiar dullness of disappointment. Mike Leonard January 08.

Tom Dolby's second novel is not quite as original as his first, but he captures much of teenage feeling: that mixture of the excitement of sexual maturity, the belief that you can conquer the world and, at the same time, an acute feeling of vulnerability. Ethan,for all his shyness,is fundamentally more at ease with himself than his friend Todd, whose bravado conceals his insecurity with his own sexuality. Dolby is particularly acute at portraying relationships that are intense but transitory,not just Ethan's relationship with an older, and slightly sinister, woman but his relationship with his best friend Todd. This book has the hallmarks of being rooted, if not in personal experience, then in acute observation and empathy. At the end of the book, both guys have established happy relationships, Ethan with a girl his own age and Todd with an ex-schoolfriend whose geekiness concealed the attraction he held for Todd. But will Ethan and Todd be more than occasional friends by the end of their university careers?