The Trouble Boy | 
| Author: Tom Dolby
Publisher: Kensington
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $11.20
You Save: $2.80 (20%)
Rating:  34 reviews
Media: Paperback
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 0758206178
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780758206176
ASIN: 0758206178
Publication Date: February 1, 2005
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Book Description
In the tradition of Bright Lights, Big City and Less Than Zero, Tom Dolby has written a searing debut novel about going after what you really want without losing yourself in the process. Powerfully written, keenly felt, The Trouble Boy heralds an exciting new voice in fiction. "This is about fame and celebrity and the lengths to which people will go to have a taste of it..." At twenty-two, Toby Griffin wants it all-fame, fortune, an Oscar-winning screenplay and a good-looking boyfriend by his side. For now, what he's got is a freelance writing job at a tanking online magazine, a walk-up sublet in the East Village and "the boys," a young posse of preppy Upper East Siders with a taste for high fashion, top-shelf liquor and other men. But for Toby, downing vodka cranberries and falling in and out of lust with a series of guys he knows as Subway Boy, Loft Boy and Goth Boy is getting old. So is being pursued by his best friend Jamie while secretly desiring his co-worker, Donovan, a sexual adventurer who seems intent on conducting his own Kinsey report in bedrooms across the city. That all changes when Toby gets the chance of a lifetime-working as a personal assistant to hip, ruthless film mogul, Cameron Cole. Picking up Cameron's steamed veggies and typing up his memos is Toby's entree to the big time, moving in a dizzying crowd of celebrities and power makers. Suddenly he's swilling champagne with scenemakers like publicist Ariana Richards, Hollywood bombshell Jordan Gardner, and club performer Lola Copacabana. In this decadent, drug-fueled world of VIP lounges, endless networking and relentless hype, Toby discovers that nothing is what is seems and that anything and anyone can be spun into PR gold. Though he's making friends with all the right people. Toby realizes that succeeding in Manhattan isn't as easy as he thought-until the one tragic night that changes his future forever and puts him in a position of power he never could have imagined. But with Toby's name suddenly becoming Page Six material, his life is coming unglued. And as his professional contacts betray him and his friends reveal troubling secrets, his choices become that much harder-and that much more important. Now, in his first year on his own, Toby Griffin is about to learn the price of getting everything he ever wanted...
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 29 more reviews...
 Entertaining junk food January 26, 2008
Richard A. Jenkins (Washington, DC USA)
I found "The Trouble Boy" entertaining enough to finish, but I didn't see what the 4 & 5-star reviewers saw. Dolby has talent as a writer, and presumably writes from what he knows, but the book falls short of being anything more than "beach reading". The universe of the book is one where everyone comes from very well-off backgrounds, has ivy league (or ivy-ish educations) and seems to get bailed out by fairly advantaged connections. The ending is a bit pat, and its one complication gets resolved a little too easily. The main characters may live in crappy apartments in the East Village and max out their credit cards, but it not like they truly have to survive that way. The book reminds me of the brat pack fiction of the 80s. Comparison to "Bonfire of the Vanities" only makes sense as far as Dolby has borrowed a similar kind of plot device. He lacks Wolfe's sardonic satire, though. The ups and downs of gay friendships and relationships may be familiar in life, but offer no real perspectives or insights. In some ways, this struck me as "drawing room" fiction about twenty-somethings. Usually this sort of thing works better if the story is told from the perspective of a true outsider, or introduces an outsider to an alien world. Toby, in his naivety, is a bit of an outsider, but he is basically an apprentice in a world filled with Tobys. More of an attempt at satire or real rebellion against the bigger world of privilege would have added interest. It may be that Dolby simply lacks the experience of really going outside this world or a narrative that doesn't rehash old characters or situations. Still, it's fine as a diversion and I'm sure someone could make a decent 2 1/2 star indie film out of it.
 Shattering a Myth November 26, 2007
Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Dolby. Tom, "The Trouble Boy", Kensington, 2004.
Shattering a Myth
Amos Lassen
After reading Tom Dolby's new book , "The Sixth Form" due to be released in January 2008, I went back to reread the novel "The Trouble Boy" which he wrote in 2004. I am firmly convinced that Dolby is an author to watch. The two books are monuments in gay literature as Dolby manages to blend fact with fiction and give us a picture of how we live. "The Trouble Boy" shatters the myth that the party boys of New York City have wonderful times and great sex lives. (At least that is what we have always thought in Arkansas).
Toby Griffin, our hero, recently graduated from an Ivy League college and now spends his time at the "in" scene of lower Manhattan. He surrounds himself with friends who are aware socially as they adhere to their own upward mobility. Toby, himself, comes from a wealthy background so he knew how to act around those he chose to be friends with. The story is the fictionalized account of a man's first year in New York and Dolby gives the narration in clear crisp prose.
Toby is a man with a goal--to be a screenwriter and he thinks that there is only way to deal with life and that has nothing to do with the life of privilege from which Toby comes. As he waits for one of his screenplays to be accepted, he takes a job as a nightlife editor, as a hip "dot comer", as an assistant to a producer. His idea of a balanced life includes going to the bars of the East Village and the West Village alike. This gives the backdrop of the novel--a kind of hedonism that is, in many ways, counter-productive. The story is straightforward and quite bold.
The night life of New York City has always held a sense of glamour for those who do not have the chance to experience it and Dolby rips that glamour away. Our hero, Toby, with his weakness for vodka and cranberry and recreational "bumps of coke" does not come across as a romantic hero but rather as one who has trouble knowing who he is and what he wants. His life is not so good--his sexual relationships, his friendships, his idea of love and his ideals for working in the film industry all go belly up in his face. Toby does not understand love or acceptance until the final page of the novel in a scene that is so beautifully rendered and presented and tender that it brings the entire story to a bittersweet close. It's an amazing book which even with its ugly looks at the Manhattan gay scene manages to come across as a story of acceptance and identity
great book, great cast of characters September 17, 2007
CL (Chapel Hill, NC)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
So I just finished Tom Dolby's "The Trouble Boy." What a great urban story taking place in my favorite city, New York! And there's such a fun cast of characters who come in and out of the main character Toby's life. You have his gay posse, his professional contacts, and all the random boys who come and go. Throw in a somewhat troubled relationship with his parents too.
At first, I kind of felt like the book was a bit scattered. However, I ended up liking that feeling since it reflected Toby's hectic life after college as he tries reaching fame/success as a screenwriter. You get to come along with Toby on his various adventures in all the hot NYC night spots. You see Toby transform from a club hopping boy making questionable decisions to someone who ultimately finds himself by the end of the book. And it's such a fun ride!
I can't wait to read future works from Tom Dolby.
|
|
|
