Back to Blood: A Novel

A writer like Tom Wolfe probably shouldn’t have to stage a comeback, but there will doubtless be reviewers of his new novel, Back to Blood, who describe it that way. In Wolfe's career of great books, his last novel, published in 2004, was considered by many to be a stumble--but Back to Blood is a return to form, a work that solidifies Wolfe’s stature as one of the best. Using his incisive journalistic skills, his flair for the cinematic moment, and his laugh-out-loud sense of humor, Wolfe takes the disparate types in and around Miami to create a tapestry of memorable scenes and characters. The result is entertaining, revealing, and perhaps even bigger than the sum of its parts. This is a book that will do for Miami what Wolfe's mega-hit The Bonfire of the Vanities did for New York. --Chris Schluep

*Starred Review* After skewering academia in I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004), 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 (1998). This time he takes on Miami, which, as one character declares, is not America. Wolfe’s pizzazz and obsessions are on peacock display, from slapstick action to ironic stereotypes to photorealist settings, including smugly trendy restaurants, a gated island, the bawdy Biscayne Bay regatta, and the prestigious annual exhibition, Art Basel Miami. The king and queen in his chess-set cast of characters are two young Cuban Americans determined to ascend above the modest homes and rigid mindsets of their “Little Havana” neighborhood. Freakishly muscular Nestor is a sweet-natured cop who earns combustible notoriety when he daringly rescues an illegal Cuban immigrant from atop a ship’s mast. Beautiful Magdalena is a nurse working for an Anglo psychiatrist who treats wealthy patients addicted to pornography. Also on the board are a sly, Waspy reporter; a suspect Russian art collector; and a lovely Haitian college student. 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. Though plagued with belabored sex scenes, this is a shrewd, riling, and exciting tale of a volatile, divisive, sun-seared city where “everybody hates everybody.” HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Anticipation has been high for several years now, so the publisher will crank up the publicity for what can legitimately be dubbed a cultural event. --Donna Seaman

"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." (Kirkus (starred review) )

"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.'" (Booklist (starred review) Donna Seaman )

"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." (Washington Post Ron Charles )

"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." (Miami Herald Connie Ogle )

"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." (New York Times Book Review Thomas Mallon )

"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." (Boston Sunday Globe William McKeen )

"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." (Vanity Fair James Wolcott )

"Preposterous, overwrought, contrived, wildly ambitious, and outrageously entertaining. It is, in other words, classic Wolfian fare." (Christian Science Monitor Husna Huq )

"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." (Philadelphia Enquirer John Timpane )

"A rollicking good story. Akin to The Bonfire of the Vanities, the book has memorable characters and big themes." (Seattle Times Ken Armstrong )

"A typically overstuffed, overstated, delectably over-the-top portrait of modern Miami." (St. Louis Post-Dispatch Dale Singer )

"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." (The Daily Beast Michael Moynihan )

"Another big, sprawling, engrossing, hilarious, character-packed and action-driven novel by the master chronicler of modern America." (Minneapolis Star-Tribune Bob Hoover )

"Gripping....[Wolfe] limns a dog-eat-dog world in which people behave like animals, scratching and clawing their way up the greasy social pole." (New York Times Michiko Kakutani )

"A breezy, funny read...and an examination of just what it means to be a man." (LA Weekly Sarah Fenske )

"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." (People Kyle Smith )

"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." (San Francisco Chronicle Adam Langer )