Back to Blood

A Novel

By: Tom Wolfe

Narrated by: Lou Diamond Phillips

Length: 20 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

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 best-selling novels, Back to Blood is another brilliant, spot-on, scrupulous, and often hilarious reckoning with our times.

©2012 Tom Wolfe (P)2012 Hachette

Great performance of a Good book

Lou Diamond Phillips is a great performer as he reads! Makes me want to move to Miami

This book could have been so much better

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Tom Wolfe is great at character, scene, and setting development in his writing. Bonfire of the Vanities is one of my favorite books because of those elements, combined with a great plot. But it's almost like Wolfe completely forgot to include a plot in this book. He sets the stage for the plot early in the book, more or less abandons it for the next 85% of the book, then quickly wraps it up at the end. He spent way too much time describing the thoughts and feelings of particular characters in scenes to the point I kept saying, "let's get on with it." How much insight does it provide to describe someone's thoughts to the most minute detail? I feel that there was a masterpiece waiting to be written here, but Wolfe couldn't bother to put it together.

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

The general ethnic variety of Miami is an interesting setting and good study of socio-economic trends in this ethnically diverse area.

What about Lou Diamond Phillips’s performance did you like?

I thought he did a great job of performing the various characters, from Cuban, to American, to Haitian, to Russian. His performance was better than the story, itself.

Was Back to Blood worth the listening time?

Not really, no. I'm most disappointed because Wolfe had the elements to make a really great novel, but chose to focus too much of the text on the wrong things.

Any additional comments?

The very ending of the book perplexed me as well, It had to do with the girl Nestor chose to call between three potential women. It just didn't make sense to me, nor tie in to the theme or story of the book.

Tom Wolfe Does Carl Hiaasen

What a Hoot!..... Tom Wolfe does Carl Hiaasen does Confederacy of Dunces. A wonderful romp thru the over-the-top and down-the-rabbit hole world of modern day Miami. All that is missing is Horatio Cain and Tony Montana and "my little friend".

Lou Diamond Phillips does a fine narration making the Cuban accents intelligible.

This is for Miami what Confederacy of Dunces was for New Orleans.

I loved this book!

Lou Diamond Phillips was extraordinary as narrator and the story was great. I listened to another Tom Wolfe novel right after because this was so good! It was intelligent yet easy, dealt with difficult issues with levity - I highly recommend.

A Tom Wolfe Classic

I enjoyed this story as much as A Man in Full. Part of what makes a story great is the adventure of learning things you never knew about a culture and a region, interesting things, and often fascinating things. I was completely captured over and over as this story careens from one cultural clique to another. We follow an unwilling and unlikely protagonist in Nestor Camacho a pumped up Cuban and Miami cop, almost a Keystone cop in the way he tries his best just to keep from screwing up yet winds up time and again as the center of Miami's media focus - as both a hero and a villan. Great story. Great characters. Great performance.

Tom Wolfe + Lou Diamond Phillips = A GREAT LISTEN!

Where does Back to Blood rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I have listened to 3 Tom Wolfe Audiobooks and they ALL rank among my top favorite listens! Well worth the credits!

What does Lou Diamond Phillips bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

LDP's narration was magnificent! I thought that maybe there was more than one narrator, but it was just him. I am definitely about to search through all the titles that he narrates and see if I can find something else great to listen to.

Haven't finished

Only on the first few chapter, and already annoyed that the narrator doesn't know how to pronounce Mary Brickell. It's BRICK-ell, not bri-CKELL. It's like nails on a chalkboard to a native Miamian.

Entertaining But Strained

Back to Blood is journalist-turned-novelist Tom Wolfe’s fourth novel, all best sellers, but it is still a very slight tale. It could be called “Miami Exposed,” as it seeks to paint a portrait of that city’s many warring classes and ethnic territorials, all, in their own way, pursuing the American dream. Most of the characters are so overblown that they are cartoons of real people, and the situations that Wolfe creates for them are so implausible, that the novel is sometimes more farce than drama. Still, Wolfe is such a good story-teller that the reader is nudged onward to find out how it all turns out, which will lead many readers to be disappointed because Wolfe frequently either abandons his characters or fails to resolve situations in which he has placed them. I have now read all of Wolfe’s four novels, and I would recommend that anyone interested in reading Back to Blood, do so only after they have read his earlier works in the order that they were written. Wolfe gets worse with each of his novels, but they’re still good enough to keep him and his readership going.

What saved this book for me, was the superb reader, who made this a better book than it would otherwise have been.

Describes the real Miami very well.

If you could sum up Back to Blood in three words, what would they be?

Really makes you think about human relations, our culture and feelings towards each other. Very well written.

Great blast at Miami life, could use less detail

Cubans, Haitians, Russians, Anglos, old Jews, Art Basel, modern art in Miami. Wolfe blasts them all in his inimitable style. But it seems like he filled the book with more detail than is needed; in order to make the book longer?