Back to Blood

By: Tom Wolfe

Narrated by: Lou Diamond Phillips

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.

Critic reviews

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

Good and Wolfe-like

Would you try another book from Tom Wolfe and/or Lou Diamond Phillips?

Yep

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

Including the sociological workings of the metropolitan area where the story is set in what seemed likely to be accurate seemed most distinctly interesting. Too often authors either ignore such things or continue perpetuating the fantasy of how things go in the USA, instead of how it is and has been for decades. I'm not sure how a white male like Wolfe gets away with contradicting the fantasy that life in the USA is how it was supposedly was 60 years ago and no changes have occured. Most people get their career crucified if they tell the truth or contradict the fiction unless they are also pitching to a conservative audience only. My only guess as to why Wolfe gets a pass is that he does not associate what is going on with a political party. Anyway, it's nice to have fiction that is supposedly set in the present read like it is.If anyone else likes that aspect in a book Gone Girl by Gillian Flyn is a mystery-suspense book that does this very well too.

What aspect of Lou Diamond Phillips’s performance would you have changed?

Can't think of anything I would change. He did a great job. Distinctive characters, both genders handled well, various accents too. Wolfe's device of repeating words 3-5 times to emphasize how intense a character feels about something is more annoying in audio form than text but that was his error, not Lou's IMHO.

Any additional comments?

I went with this abbriged version because it seemed long enough. It didn't seem incomplete and I liked it so I'm glad I didn't get the longer version. In case I'm the only one who ever reviews the abbriged, that unabbriged has many more reviews for you to check out.