Rating: 
Summary: The literary equivalent of a snack ...
Review: ... pleasant enough but not much substance.Yet another "coming-to-grips-with-being-gay" story, "The Trouble Boy" should keep you entertained for the duration of a plane journey but you're likely to forget it pretty soon afterwards. Tom Dolby's style is uniformly journalistic throughout, i.e. punchy, and at times even quite amusing. This enables him to sustain the pace but somewhat prevents the characters from being much more than cardboard cut-outs. The flash-back to the university episode did not gel with the rest of the novel and managed to be artificial instead of adding depth. Some readers might also treat "The Trouble Boy" as a "roman a clefs" and engage in a spot who is who game that may add piquancy to this otherwise rather bland concoction.
Rating: 
Summary: "Yeah, the look says, "Come do something bad with me."
Review: Anyone who is interested in the trials of urban, hip, twenty-something gay men, is going to find a lot to like in Tom Dolby's debut novel, the Trouble Boy. The main protagonists live in a world of club kids, drag queens, leather daddies, fashion victims, gorgeous college kids who could belong in a Bruce Webber photograph, and personalities who don't fit into any category at all - all of them wed together in a society of mutual admiration. Smart, intuitive, and sexy, the novel introduces us to the immensely likeable Toby Griffin as he looks for success in a Manhattan that has become a giant celebrity infested playground, "where nothing holds any meaning without a bold-faced name attached." The Trouble Boy has a tight little knot of a plot combining sex, gossip, and hedonism. And the task of untying that knot falls to Toby, the novel's first person narrator. When we first meet him Toby, is at a Manhattan party where "people don't talk to anyone they don't know already" where he meets Jamie Weissman who becomes his best friend and partner in crime. Toby and Jamie, together with Toby's co-worker Donovan, take an indelible delight, in carousing, drinking, cruising boys, and occasionally snorting lines of coke. Coming from a world of privilege - his father is an investment banker and his mother is fashion designer in San Francisco - Toby lands into hothouse environment of New York where he is desperate to meet new people. He becomes the boy "in trouble" when partying and having a good time conflicts with his dreams of becoming a famous screenwriter. Toby has been working on a screenplay called Breeders, a kind of science fiction satire on the world of homophobia. Smart and sensitive, Toby knows he's got talent and that his job is to find a place in the world, but the finding isn't easy. He also knows what he wants but it's the getting there that's the hard part, "not the act itself, but the before, the approach." The men he meets are dishonest and flaky; he can't get his screenplay optioned, Donovan, with whom he has a crush on doesn't want him, and his job working as a night-club editor for CityStyle - a website about New York's nightlife and fashion goes belly up, when the company who owns the site withdraws their investment. Toby begins not to care anymore about what is right and wrong, and what is appropriate or not - he just wants to escape. Frustration becomes depression and depression leads to more drinking, and faced with a succession of one-night stands Toby begins to have "an emptiness gnawing at his gut." He wants something more meaningful than just being used as a sex object - more than a "box of condoms, sweaty sheets, or a crumpled up phone number." Toby wants to be remembered. Slowly the novel turns on his troubled association with Ariana Richards, the publicist for Hollywood bombshell Jordan Gardner, and Cameron Cole, president of an independent gay film company where Toby lands a job. When Jordan, addled with drugs and alcohol, causes a terrible accident outside a club one night, Toby is forced to rethink his priorities, and he realizes that fame and fortune in the entertainment world come at a terrible price. Dolby may well have started to give us a story about self-indulgence, excess and intemperance, but what he has actually given us is a story about love, sexual honesty and the trials they entail. Dolby constantly demands our attention by instilling his embattled hero with a quirky sense of humour, an overriding humanity and a prevailing tenderness. That he can create such a fully rounded character in the process, and in the end forge a more enlightened way of living for Toby, shows his skill as a storyteller, and makes The Trouble Boy an enormous achievement and an absolute delight to read. Mike Leonard June 04.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Goes deep into the pysche of the main character without getting too over the top. Excellent read.
Rating: 
Summary: A forthright, honest look at being young in New York
Review: I picked this up because I've been looking for well-written gay fiction (and it's been hard to find any), and I read a good review for it. I thought it was very well-done. The main character, Toby, manages to be sympathetic even when he's not always likable, and the other characters are believable versions of people I see out all the time. The plot has lots of twists and turns, but it's Toby's development as a person that I most related to and enjoyed. Sometimes it's very serious, like when AIDS comes up but thankfully doesn't take over the story. But it can be very funny in a mordant, David-Sedaris way--there's a flashback to Toby's coming out that's very moving and yet hilarious, and comes into the story by means of a neat little literary trick. If you're a gay guy in NYC and looking for a book you can relate to, or if you're wondering what it would be like to be gay in NYC, I can't imagine a better book for you. I wish I'd read this before I came out--it would have made it a lot easier, as it's such an accurate portrayal of what I was in for, and what pitfalls to avoid. (And the book has enough of a young-and-hip-in-new-york vibe that it works as general fiction as well as gay fiction, so I wouldn't have had to hide it!)
Rating:
Summary: A remarkably insightful page turner
Review: I picked this up expecting histrionics and navel-gazing, and instead found a rollicking romp through the New York jungle that got me nostalgic for the halcyon days of velvet ropes, bitchy publicists, and too many vodka cranberries. You'd never know you missed it until you saw it so endearingly satirized. That said, there are stretches of candid and near-heartbreaking sentiment, and they make up a solid emotional backbone for one of the most familiar and accessible urban characters in recent memory. With Sex and the City's swan song now sung, it's time the guys had some fun.
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Summary: A poignant comedy of modern gay life
Review: I picked up this book because a friend had recommended it and I read a good review. I absolutely devoured it--I spent my entire Saturday afternoon finishing it, because I had to know how it would end! It was like a great episode of Sex and the City, or of a smarter Queer as Folk. The main character, Toby, and his friends reminded me of a night out with my friends--a bunch of guys who are hip and smart on the outside yet are riddled with the insecurities that all of us have. The Trouble Boy is a fabulous, page-turning read, but more importantly, it contains some poignant truths about gay life today, and what it means to be young and single in the city. I can only hope that the author writes a sequel, so that I could continue on with the character's adventures.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing and Real - GET IT.
Review: I was totally engaged the whole time -- from page 1 until the end -- in all of the characters' lives in The Trouble Boy. Tom Dolby could have been writing about all of our friends, or often ourselves, as he takes us through his New York experience. Its great to see something written that encapsulates life -- not just gay life -- but anyone's life. GET THIS BOOK -- ITS GREAT!
Rating: 
Summary: fun, contemporary, shallow
Review: I worry whenever a main character in a book is compared to Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye. This often means the book will be the angsty stream of consciousness philosophy of a person who thinks they are more complex than they really are. Toby (probably an alter ego for the author TOm dolBY), Trouble oy was quite a bit more fun and less pretentious than that but the book did fall short in a couple of places for me.
I got the book mainly because the main character was my age an it was NOT a coming out novel. It is nice to encounter a story where the main character has moved beyond that overused stage of life. Toby is easy to relate to for many gay 20-somethings, he's in the scene but not obsessed with it, he has a group of friends who can be as challenging as they can be supportive, he's a little shallow (I think most guys are to some degeree no matter how much we might protest). There were many scenes with which I could immediately relate. However, at times, it was a little hard to feel sympathy for a Yale graduate at 22 living on his own in Manhattan, in an apartment paid for by his affluent parents, who can afford to go out drinking nearly every night of the week. When he says he probably wouldn't have dated a guy if he knew he worked in retail it put me off a bit.
Also I had a really hard time with the last few chapters of the book (read no further if you want to be completely surprised) where Toby finds a young untainted boy and decides to for the most part reject his former life and friends. One can certinly understand the attraction of a person not obsessed with the urban social scene, and everyone needs a break but the vehemence with which he seemed to write off his former life was more than a little startling.
In its favor there are many fun chapters especialy those revolving around the foppery of the social elite and the book is quite the page turner; flaws aside I couldn't put it down until I was finished.
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Summary: The must read gay summer novel of 2004
Review: If F. Scott's Amory Blaine died and then was reincarnated as Salinger's Holden Caulfield, who subsequently passed away at an early age, only to resurface as a gay male at the later part of the 20th Century, he would be Dolby's Toby Griffin. A true coming of age story if there ever was one; The Trouble Boy is a guide to the inner workings of not only the Manhattan PR Machine, but also the workings of the mind of a troubled youth, a youth who ultimately comes into his own in the truest of style. A witty and ironic page-turner which will populate the beaches from Fire Island to Laguna this summer and don't be surprised if a few copies turn up in Martha's Vineyard or even, gasp, somewhere other than Laguna in "The OC."
Rating:
Summary: Promising Debut Novel
Review: Looking only at the inside flap of the book (come on, we're gay, we do it) it's hard to imagine that a strikingly handsome author of Dolby descent would be able to write a novel about being (or perceiving oneself as being) .. well, average, insecure and confused as to one's place in the world. Actually READING the book, though, you find that his main character is all of those things. Cute and young enough to possibly make up for not being TOTALLY hot, Toby, the main character, seems to do nothing but screw up opportunities to 'elevate' himself to the A-list in a snotty, screwed-up New York of the new millenium. The beauty of this book, though, is that like Sex & the City and Less than Zero - two books this one has been likened to - it has nothing to do with New York or snotty A-lister's or even young almost-hot men.. rather, it's a story about a person coming of age in a time where everything seems possible, everything seems desirable. His Toby, however, is not unlike the rest of us: he wants to be successful, he wants to find love, and he wants to maintain his sense of self but has to do so in spite of horrible bosses, frenemies (the one Sex and the City reference that fits - the episode where friends act like enemies) and a bank account hovering just above zero. The approachability and enjoyability of this novel is not based on the fact that it's glitzy or set in New York or filled with drama and scandal - that has been done, to varying levels of success, by other authors. What made this book so enjoyable was the fact that the main character was real, honest about his vanities and shortcomings, and in the end decided that being a good person and doing the right thing for his friends, family and self, brought him the happiness that everything else had not. (Side note: for those of you who read and enjoyed Bart Yates' "Leave Myself Behind," the main character in this book reminds me of a grown up "Noah" - and the fact that Mr. Yates endorses the book on the dust cover should persuade you to read the book!)
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