What holds our attention in Back to Blood…are Mr. Wolfe's two main characters: Nestor Camacho…and his former girlfriend Magdalena…Although Mr. Wolfe can be patronizing toward this pair, mocking them for their ignorance and naïveté, he also portrays them with genuine sympathy, using their earnest idealism as a prism by which to view the pretensions, social climbing and Machiavellian manipulation that burbles all around them. Nestor and Magdalena show that…Mr. Wolfe has been able to build upon the advances he made in creating flesh-and-blood people in A Man in Full (1998)—people who are not defined simply by their clothes, cars and verbal idiosyncrasies, but who actually possess something resembling an inner life.
—Michiko Kakutani

Two hundred pages into Wolfe's frantic potboiler about Miami's melting pot, a description of City Hall reminds readers of the vivid detail that made Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities) a literary icon. Yet despite flashes of "the right stuff", his latest novel comprises not an exposé of popular culture so much as a lurid compendium of clichés. The prologue features a scandal-fearing newspaper editor fretting as his wife tries to park her mini-hybrid at a trendy restaurant, but the action begins with marine patrolman Nestor Camacho speeding across Biscayne Bay. Unfortunately, his moment of glory dissolves into humiliation when he is condemned for arresting, after saving, a Cuban refugee. Resolute in pressing on, a bewildered Nestor works with reporter John Smith to unravel fraud at the city's new art museum and uncover the truth behind an incident of school violence. In the process, he meets elegant Haitian beauty Ghislaine, whose professor father desperately hopes she'll "pass" for white. African Americans, Russian émigrés, and Jewish retirees also appear: ethnic groups separated by language, tribe, and class; linked together by sex, money, and real estate. Filling his prose with sound effects, foreign phrases, accented English, and slang, Wolfe creates his own Miami sound machine—noisy, chaotic, infused with tropical rhythms, and fueled by the American dream. The result is a book louder than it is deep; more sensational than it is thought provoking; less like Wolfe at his best, more like tabloid headlines recast as fiction. (Oct. 23)

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."—New York Times Book Review

"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."—Washington Post Book World

A Man in Full (1998):

"The novel contains passages as powerful and as beautiful as anything written—not merely by contemporary American novelists but by any American novelist....The book is as funny as anything Wolfe has ever written; at the same time it is also deeply, strangely affecting."—New York Times Book Review

I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004):

"Wolfe is one of the greatest literary stylists and social observers of our much observed postmodern era....A rich, wise, absorbing, and irresistible novel."—Lev Grossman, Time

"Wolfe's dialogue is some of the finest in literature, not just fast but deep. He hears the cacophony of our modern lives."—Los Angeles Times

"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."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post

Wolfe remains as skillful as ever in texturing the novel’s terrain, from the ‘prairie of concrete’ formed by Hialeah’s front yards to a tired retirement complex up in Broward County where ‘the little iron balconettes and the aluminum frames for the sliding doors looked as if they were about to fall off and die in a pile.”

A soapy, gripping, and sometimes glib novel.”

A shrewd, riling, and exciting tale of a volatile, divisive, sun-seared city where ‘everybody hates everybody.’”

Actor Lou Diamond Phillips portrays Nestor Comacho, a man with both pride in his heritage and a thirst to be fully assimilated into America’s ever-changing culture. Ultimately, he performs a death-defying act that is perceived as heroic in the white community and as a betrayal in the Latin community. Phillips relishes the dramatic pauses and changes pace to match Nestor’s inner struggle and frustrations.”

Wolfe, Master of the New Journalism Universe, has done his homework and done it well.”

Actor Lou Diamond Phillips does full justice to Wolfe’s sprawling, multicharacter novel of present day Miami, with its amazing mixture of ethnicities and cultures. He can handle Cubans, African Americans, Russians, Haitians, and even elderly retired New Yorkers with ease and authority.”

[Wolfe] has not lost his gift for panoramic presentation; Back to Blood surges with its large ensemble cast of Floridians and immigrants with mixed histories and conflicting agendas. This sun-bronzed band of sailors, crack dealers, art enthusiasts, porn addicts, insomniacs, and love-struck romantics keep the fiction bristling with meaning even as the action moves forward.”

"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's dialogue is some of the finest in literature, not just fast but deep. He hears the cacophony of our modern lives."

I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004):

"Wolfe is one of the greatest literary stylists and social observers of our much observed postmodern era....A rich, wise, absorbing, and irresistible novel."

"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."

"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."

"A breezy, funny read...and an examination of just what it means to be a man."

"Another big, sprawling, engrossing, hilarious, character-packed and action-driven novel by the master chronicler of modern America."

"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."

"A typically overstuffed, overstated, delectably over-the-top portrait of modern Miami."

"A rollicking good story. Akin to The Bonfire of the Vanities, the book has memorable characters and big themes."

"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."

"Preposterous, overwrought, contrived, wildly ambitious, and outrageously entertaining. It is, in other words, classic Wolfian fare."

"The premier 19^th-century novelist of the 21^st 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."

"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."

"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."

I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004):

"Wolfe is one of the greatest literary stylists and social observers of our much observed postmodern era....A rich, wise, absorbing, and irresistible novel.

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.
— Washington Post

I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004):

"Wolfe is one of the greatest literary stylists and social observers of our much observed postmodern era....A rich, wise, absorbing, and irresistible novel.
— Time

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.'
— Booklist (Starred Review)

Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities) here returns to familiar themes: race, sex, class, and society. Set in Miami, the novel (with some digressions) ostensibly tells the story of Nestor Camacho, a Cuban American policeman, but as with Wolfe’s other fiction the real focus is on larger issues in American society. And as is the case with his other books, this broader focus is a weakness. The characters are secondary to the wider themes, often to the detriment of a listener’s interest in and engagement with the story. This is alleviated to some extent by the fine narration by actor Lou Diamond Phillips but eventually makes this a less-than-stellar audiobook experience.

Verdict Of interest to Wolfe fans.—Wendy Galgan, St. Francis Coll., Brooklyn
(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Former new journalist and documenter of America’s social evolution in bestsellers like BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES and THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST, Tom Wolfe casts his magnifying glass on Miami in his new novel. Actor Lou Diamond Phillips portrays Nestor Comacho, a man with both pride in his heritage and a thirst to be fully assimilated into America’s ever-changing culture. Ultimately, he performs a death-defying act that is perceived as heroic in the white community and as a betrayal in the Latin community. Phillips relishes the dramatic pauses and changes pace to match Nestor’s inner struggle and frustrations. Wolfe’s attention to detail and the milieu of Miami make this a “shouldn’t-miss” proposition. R.O. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine