Reviews
The novel roars and zips along like a cigarette boat, and even at 81 the Man in White proves to be a marvelous reporter. Call this bawdy humdinger the Bonfire of the Miamians., The premier 19th-century novelist of the 21st century, the thin white duke of American neon prose, Tom Wolfe may be the last of the literary showmen in the era of mopers and trauma specialists. Wolfe shows no signs of slackening energy or ambition in his latest novel, Back to Blood., Wolfe's dialogue is some of the finest in literature, not just fast but deep. He hears the cacophony of our modern lives., Within a masterfully strategized plot, Wolfe works his sardonic mojo to mock both prejudice and decadence and demolish the art world, reality TV, tawdry fame, and journalism in the digital age....This is a shrewd, riling, and exciting tale of a volatile, diverse, sun-seared city where 'everybody hates everybody.', Wolfe, the impish, white-suited satirist, eviscerates a city-in-flux as he did with New York in The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) and Atlanta in A Man in Full (1988). This is a shrewd, riling, and exciting tale of a volatile, diverse, sun-seared city where 'everybody hates everybody.', As if the 45 years from Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test to here hadn't passed, Wolfe is back to some old tricks, including an ever-shifting, sometimes untrustworthy point of view, dizzying pans from one actor to another and rat-a-tat prose....A welcome pleasure from an old master., The novel's pointed observations are dangerously close to reality: Wolfe, Master of the New Journalism Universe, has done his homework and done it well. There is nothing in the novel that couldn't happen tomorrow right outside your window., PRAISE FOR TOM WOLFE: Bonfire of the Vanities(1987): "A big, bitter, funny, craftily plotted book that grabs you by the lapels and won't let go.", PRAISE FOR TOM WOLFE: Back to Blood: "As if the 45 years fromElectric Kool-Aid Acid Testto here hadn't passed, Wolfe is back to some old tricks, including an ever-shifting, sometimes untrustworthy point of view, dizzying pans from one actor to another and rat-a-tat prose....A welcome pleasure from an old master.", Bonfire of the Vanities(1987): "A big, bitter, funny, craftily plotted book that grabs you by the lapels and won't let go.", Tom Wolfe's achievement...remains buoyant and considerable, and American novelists, still so often caught up in the most trivial of private dramas, continue to need him at the top of their lineup., The premier 19th-century novelist of the 21stcentury, the thin white duke of American neon prose, Tom Wolfe may be the last of the literary showmen in the era of mopers and trauma specialists. Wolfe shows no signs of slackening energy or ambition in his latest novel, Back to Blood., Another big, sprawling, engrossing, hilarious, character-packed and action-driven novel by the master chronicler of modern America., Wolfe is a sorcerer who can stir up a storm of swirling characters, all of them trapped in their own dilemmas and delusions....you'll enjoy everyone's panicked thoughts. For a nation of immigrants, we're still comically sensitive around one another, and Miami is a perfect place to watch the melting pot boil., A rollicking good story. Akin to The Bonfire of the Vanities , the book has memorable characters and big themes., Back to Bloodis a bracing vision of America's shifting demography and the immutability of ethnic conflict and class aspirations....Wolfe demonstrates that his skills as a novelist and a chronicler of America's class anxieties are undiminished., Immensely entertaining and insightful. Nobody does hedonism and excess like Miami, and Wolfe has managed to wrangle all of his observations into an expansive book that despite its huge cast avoids becoming unruly., Brilliant...I couldn't stop reading it....Tom Wolfe can make words dance and sing and perform circus tricks, he can make the reader sigh with pleasure., Wolfe is writing with as much brio as he brought to his debut novel,The Bonfire of the Vanities, 25 years ago. Back to Blood demonstrates the author's persistent vitality., Gripping....[Wolfe] limns a dog-eat-dog world in which people behave like animals, scratching and clawing their way up the greasy social pole., As if the 45 years fromElectric Kool-Aid Acid Testto here hadn't passed, Wolfe is back to some old tricks, including an ever-shifting, sometimes untrustworthy point of view, dizzying pans from one actor to another and rat-a-tat prose....A welcome pleasure from an old master., A superb human comedy and the first novel ever to get contemporary New York, in all its arrogance and shame and heterogeneity and insularity, exactly right., Wolfe is writing with as much brio as he brought to his debut novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, 25 years ago. Back to Blood demonstrates the author's persistent vitality., Preposterous, overwrought, contrived, wildly ambitious, and outrageously entertaining. It is, in other words, classic Wolfian fare., With the sweep, particularity, and deliciously flamboyant language that have become Wolfe trademarks,Back to Bloodtackles Miami and environs. Wolfeian description is seldom just pretty writing--almost always, the physical environment tells the person, tells the society., With the sweep, particularity, and deliciously flamboyant language that have become Wolfe trademarks, Back to Blood tackles Miami and environs. Wolfeian description is seldom just pretty writing--almost always, the physical environment tells the person, tells the society., Back to Blood is a bracing vision of America's shifting demography and the immutability of ethnic conflict and class aspirations....Wolfe demonstrates that his skills as a novelist and a chronicler of America's class anxieties are undiminished.
Synopsis
A big, panoramic story of the new America, as told by our master chronicler of the way we live now. As a police launch speeds across Miami's Biscayne Bay-with officer Nestor Camacho on board-Tom Wolfe is off and running. Into the feverous landscape of the city, he introduces the Cuban mayor, the black police chief, a wanna-go-muckraking young journalist and his Yale-marinated editor; an Anglo sex-addiction psychiatrist and his Latina nurse by day, loin lock by night-until lately, the love of Nestor's life; a refined, and oh-so-light-skinned young woman from Haiti and her Creole-spouting, black-gang-banger-stylin' little brother; a billionaire porn addict, crack dealers in the 'hoods, "de-skilled" conceptual artists at the Miami Art Basel Fair, "spectators" at the annual Biscayne Bay regatta looking only for that night's orgy, yenta-heavy ex-New Yorkers at an "Active Adult" condo, and a nest of shady Russians. Based on the same sort of detailed, on-scene, high-energy reporting that powered Tom Wolfe's previous bestselling novels, BACK TO BLOOD is another brilliant, spot-on, scrupulous, and often hilarious reckoning with our times., A big, panoramic story of the new America, as told by our master chronicler of the way we live now. As a police launch speeds across Miami's Biscayne Bay -- with officer Nestor Camacho on board -- Tom Wolfe is off and running. Into the feverous landscape of the city, he introduces the Cuban mayor, the black police chief, a wanna-go-muckraking young journalist and his Yale-marinated editor; an Anglo sex-addiction psychiatrist and his Latina nurse by day, loin lock by night-until lately, the love of Nestor's life; a refined, and oh-so-light-skinned young woman from Haiti and her Creole-spouting, black-gang-banger-stylin' little brother; a billionaire porn addict, crack dealers in the 'hoods, "de-skilled" conceptual artists at the Miami Art Basel Fair, "spectators" at the annual Biscayne Bay regatta looking only for that night's orgy, yenta-heavy ex-New Yorkers at an "Active Adult" condo, and a nest of shady Russians. Based on the same sort of detailed, on-scene, high-energy reporting that powered Tom Wolfe's previous bestselling novels, Back to Blood is another brilliant, spot-on, scrupulous, and often hilarious reckoning with our times.
