Back to Blood: A Novel

Tom Wolfe

Oct 2012 · Sold by Little, Brown

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

He must have fallen asleep on the keyboard to use such goofy and awkward punctuation...woke up, then fell asleep again during plot development. Wanted so much for this to work (and not just because there are no on-line refunds..), and wanted so much to like Nestor. Like another review said, there is possibly a good book in there somewhere...not his best.

hideous!!How the he'll does he gets all this acclaim? wtf was that ramblin crap I tried to read.Each chapter 1 disjointed run on sentence .I tried speed reading it still made my brain bleed. Quit by chapter 4.Every character a moron Absolutely nothing "hilarious" or even dark humor.I swear reviewers MUST be getting paid..its SO hard to find a well written book these days...PS writing"smack" 599 times describing a boats jumping is idiotic and amateurish

I'm not sure why I even finished this book. I didn't care any more about the characters at the end of the story than I did at the beginning. I felt compelled to see how it ended, which is why I gave it 3 stars, but the ending didn't justify making my way through the beginning and the middle. I enjoy books with characters that stay with me long after I finish reading about them. I doubt if I'll remember these characters later this afternoon.

About the author

Tom Wolfe is the author of more than a dozen books, among them The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, I Am Charlotte Simmons, and Back to Blood. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he earned his B.A. at Washington and Lee University and a Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale. He received the National Book Foundation's 2010 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in New York City.