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.
"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."--Michael Moynihan, The Daily Beast
"A breezy, funny read...and an examination of just what it means to
be a man."--Sarah Fenske, LA Weekly
"A rollicking good story. Akin to The Bonfire of the Vanities, the
book has memorable characters and big themes."--Ken Armstrong,
Seattle Times
"A typically overstuffed, overstated, delectably over-the-top
portrait of modern Miami."--Dale Singer, St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
"Another big, sprawling, engrossing, hilarious, character-packed
and action-driven novel by the master chronicler of modern
America."--Bob Hoover, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"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)
"Gripping....[Wolfe] limns a dog-eat-dog world in which people
behave like animals, scratching and clawing their way up the greasy
social pole."--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"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."--William McKeen, Boston Sunday Globe
"Preposterous, overwrought, contrived, wildly ambitious, and
outrageously entertaining. It is, in other words, classic Wolfian
fare."--Husna Huq, Christian Science Monitor
"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."--Kyle Smith,
People
"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."--Connie Ogle, Miami
Herald
"The premier 19th-century novelist of the 21st 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."--James Wolcott, Vanity Fair
"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."--Thomas Mallon, New York Times Book Review
"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."--John Timpane, Philadelphia Enquirer
"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."--Ron Charles, Washington Post
"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."--Adam Langer, San
Francisco Chronicle
"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.'"--Donna Seaman, Booklist
(starred review)
Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities) here returns to familiar themes: race, sex, class, and society. Set in Miami, the novel (with some digressions) ostensibly tells the story of Nestor Camacho, a Cuban American policeman, but as with Wolfe's other fiction the real focus is on larger issues in American society. And as is the case with his other books, this broader focus is a weakness. The characters are secondary to the wider themes, often to the detriment of a listener's interest in and engagement with the story. This is alleviated to some extent by the fine narration by actor Lou Diamond Phillips but eventually makes this a less-than-stellar audiobook experience. Verdict Of interest to Wolfe fans.-Wendy Galgan, St. Francis Coll., Brooklyn (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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