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

Cubans and Russians and Sex, oh my!

Would you consider the audio edition of Back to Blood to be better than the print version?

I didn't read the print version, but Lou Diamond Phillips was magnificent and I can't wait to listen to other audiobooks he's narrated.

What other book might you compare Back to Blood to and why?

Bonfire of the Vanities for big character creation

Have you listened to any of Lou Diamond Phillips’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, but I certainly will from here on!

Any additional comments?

This book introduced me to the complexity of the Cuban community in Miami which in my own ignorance, I had thought of as fairly one-dimensional. I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn about the community and its issues.

I get that sex and pornography were major themes in the book and in our culture, but there was a little too much of the bump, bump, grind, grind. I get it.

I agree with one other reviewer who said the end felt rushed and unresolved and I think I was looking for something out of the Haitian family's character development that never quite materialized.

Having said that, this is the kind of book I look to Tom Wolfe for - a big send-up of American culture warts and all.

Bonfire of Miami

Any additional comments?

Way better than Charlotte Simmons, not so good as Man in Full. A terrific reading by Lou Diamond Phillips gets the flavor and pizzazz of Wolfe's idiosyncratic writing. Listening to Mr Phillips' energetic interpretation was BETTER than reading the print version.

Lou Diamond Phillips: A Gem of a Reader

This is one of my favorite audiobooks thanks to the narration by Lou Diamond Phillips. He gave each character a voice that truly made that character come to life, and, most importantly, his women characters actually sounded like women so there never was any distraction from the story. I still can't figure out how Tom Wolfe manages to create humor and tension at the same time in his stories. I'm laughing, but I'm on the edge of my seat listening to Back to Blood and Bonfire of the Vanities. I find Hector to be a lovable, quirky character who shows the pitfalls of stumbling on fame. There are deep messages hidden among the laughs and they always have to do with the abuse of power.

Disjointed

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The story was broken up into pieces and it was hard to follow the thread. When I got to the end, I really didn't care how it worked out.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Performance was okay, but there was lots of stuttering when characters talked or laughed. The laughter was ingenious.

Do you think Back to Blood needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

No.

Any additional comments?

Wasn't the worst book I ever read, but not the best either.

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?