---
product_id: 11032473
title: "Back to Blood: A Novel"
brand: "tom wolfe"
price: "€ 31.56"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 7
url: https://www.desertcart.ie/products/11032473-back-to-blood-a-novel
store_origin: IE
region: Ireland
---

# Back to Blood: A Novel

**Brand:** tom wolfe
**Price:** € 31.56
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Back to Blood: A Novel by tom wolfe
- **How much does it cost?** € 31.56 with free shipping
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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A Penetrating Portrait of American Culture
  

*by "***E on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 28, 2021*

The novel's title, "Back to Blood," refers to the subliminal, if not irrational, instinct to belong to, trust, and affiliate with one's own biological kind, that is, to racial or ethnic identity. In an age when other values are in flux, this is the fallback position. The setting of this story is Miami, Florida, a major city dominated by Cubans, with significant enclaves of Haitians, American Blacks, other Latinos, Jewish retirees from New York, Russian emigres, and a significant number of Anglos who are economically and educationally well-off, wielding influence rather than power, beset with the decadence that comes from affluence without responsibility.The story centers on Nestor, the Cuban policeman assigned to the water patrol, a part of the Miami Police still dominated by Anglo officers. The overlapping dynamics of police culture, Cuban versus Anglo social norms, and their resulting tensions is tellingly portrayed in the course of Nestor's carrying out a difficult order to rescue a Cuban refugee trapped on the crow's nest of a sailing ship that has drifted too close to a bridge. The refugee, fearing he would be arrested before he could reach shore and claim asylum, boards the luxury vessel where the owner's son is partying with friends, then runs to the mast and climbs up to his dangerous perch, where he causes a traffic jam on the bridge. Nestor climbs up the mast and holds the refugee by his legs as he works hand over hand down the yard arm, winning the respect of his police colleagues. He is televised and celebrated on the news for his athletic feat. But the Cuban community sees the deed as the arrest of a countryman fleeing from Communism and regards Nestor as a traitor and pariah, including and especially his family. At the same time his girlfriend, Magdalena, unaware of Nestor's celebrity/notoriety, has decided to call their relationship quits in favor of one she has developed with her boss, an Anglo  psychiatrist almost twice her age, but somewhat of a celebrity noted for his treatment of "pornography addiction." The story traces these two individuals' experiences, choices, and interactions with members of all the aforementioned Miami communities, several of which are also well-developed characters.The Author's vivid portrayal of communities and individuals, with especial attention to social class, is a great strength of this narrative. The rich interaction of varying perspectives and the humor that arises therefrom is almost Shakespearean. Generational perspectives and the diverse development of siblings is also reflected in this story. I listened to the reading of Lou Diamond Philips on Brilliance Audio who conveyed the Cuban, Black, Russian, New York, Haitian accents, along with individual characteristics, in a manner that served the narrative well.It is common sense, yet controversial, that an individual may hold ethnic, gender, and racial prejudice (some would say that is inseparable from being ethnocentric), and yet be able to fraternize with and respect, individuals of other categories. This is amply illustrated throughout this story in the interactions Nestor and Magdalena have when each leaves the tight-knit Cuban community to live and work with people of varying background, and with differing values stemming from both social conditioning which is race/class/gender specific, and personal choice which may be myopic/oblivious, or aware/discreet.There was also a telling portrayal of the differences between men and women, whose habits of thinking and interacting also lead to contrasting cultures within ethnic or racial cultures. There was a strong element of sex in this novel which many readers will find distasteful, if not morally objectionable. Insofar as this element is A) a reflection of American morals, and B) a reflection of the choices, flaws, mistakes, crimes, or obsessions of the various characters, I might allow that they are artistically justified. Though there is a lot, I would not characterize it as gratuitous. I appreciate that it is presented in an uncommonly honest way, for example, men who find individuals attractive, but set these lustful thoughts aside to focus on the duty of the moment. Our Author avoids the all or nothing approach whereby characters.  are either all lust or all purity. What is more, the story has scenes which bring out the ambiguous nature of sex, as when one of the female characters chooses to dress in a breast-revealing outfit and alternates through the evening between pride that all the men are glancing at her and embarrassment that all the men are glancing at her. Her feelings about her date shift from hopes to win him, then despair when she realizes (or convinces herself) that she was just a one-night throw-away. The man's power and charisma at first excited her, and within 12 hours frightened her. This is real life, worth pondering.There is also several revealing portrayals of manly ritual, the posturing, silent challenging, looks and verbal formulae that save face, require acknowledgment, or establish dominance. Interestingly, many of these transcend ethnic and racial barriers but are meaningless across gender lines. I appreciate the Author's ability to observe and articulate what most men only intuit.Who wins at the end of the story? The individuals who retain integrity. This integrity is based on values that transcend the convenient or momentary. They are often intuited, though not directly expressed. This integrity is threatened by group-think (I am nothing more than my ethnicity/class/race/etc.) which insists on sacrificing the individual's perspective based on experience to the group's narrative based on emotion (usually fear) and imagination. But, this integrity is also threatened by the individual's own selfishness which may blind him/her to the fact that the heart wants contradictory things and must choose. American culture, by affirming that all values are "equal," ends up relying on the lowest common denominator ("Everyone's talking about the new craze, Honey- All you are looks and a whole lot of money..."). Wolfe's story of Miami characters working out a personal integrity presents a penetrating portrait  of American  culture.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Not Wolfe's Best, But a Good Read Nevertheless
  

*by A***O on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 28, 2012*

Much like Conrad Hensley discovering the Stoics in A Man in Full, I stumbled across Tom Wolfe by what felt in hindsight like fate when searching for books by David Foster Wallace in the public library.  They didn't have any DFW I hadn't read, but I'd seen Wolfe's name mentioned often, so I figured I'd give him a go.  Within a year I ended up reading all of his major works, and now I'd put him towards the top of the list as one of my favorite authors.Given the fact that Wolfe is now eighty-one years old, I wasn't expecting to see another major novel from him after I Am Charlotte Simmons.  With the idea in mind that I'd be reading his last major work, and upon reading that he'd returned to his calling of depicting major American cities that he executed so beautifully in his first two novels, my expectations were very high.Right before the text arrived, I was a bit dispirited to see the novel panned in Harper's, a magazine that has been a champion of Wolfe's career for quite some time.  Nevertheless, I figured the reviewer may have had his biases, and I was still looking forward to tearing into the book on the day it arrived from pre-order.  It didn't take long for me to understand what the reviewer was complaining about.  Wolfe has always done a brilliant job of intertwining his impressive command of classical prose with conventions of his own invention.  In the past, this has resulted in a unique style that keeps the text vivid and engaging.  In Back to Blood, the balance that was present in his previous works was upset by an excess of gimmicks that eventually had me skimming passages that became increasingly tedious to read.  As is apparent in reviews already posted, this led to many readers putting down the book before getting half way through it.I, however, found the complex web of characters, fast-paced multiple-plot development, incisive critique of the socially contrived economics of the art world, and descriptions of modern-day Miami to be engaging enough to keep me glued to the pages.  I ended up giving the book four stars since while it's not Wolfe's best, it's still much better than many books I've read.Although I bought-in to most of what Wolfe was conveying in the book and feel like I have a better understanding of a city that I've always found to be unique while equally alluring and revolting, there were a few issues that kept popping up in my mind when I stepped away from the text.The largest relates to his depiction of the different cultures in the book.  It seems as if Wolfe selected Miami as his final subject primarily for its cultural diversity, specifically its immigrant majority.  While he appeared to be attempting to paint an objective picture of the predominant cultures and how they interact, the end result was an overt ode to WASPs and their cultural, moral, and economic superiority over any other group.  He's essentially saying, "Here we have a city where non-whites have assumed control, but outside of the surreal bubble of this anomaly of an American city where these people have amassed power as a result of their sheer numbers, there's really not much hope for these poor folk in the bigger picture."Sure, if one looks at the numbers, in spite of all sorts of progress, white males still tend to come out on top.  I don't hold it against Wolfe for pointing out that fact.  It's the way that he repeatedly drives the point home by making two of the Cuban protagonists feel constantly inferior to the whites (WASP and otherwise) around them as a result of not knowing words they use and being unfamiliar with the subjects they discuss.  He even goes so far as to mention something a character thinks in sophisticated diction, but then adds a qualifier along the lines of "But not in those exact words, because Nestor wouldn't know what they mean."  It would be one thing if Nestor and Magdalena just hopped off the raft and barely had a command of the English language when they spoke, but the diction in their dialog, and their professions, which both require a reasonably sophisticated education, contradict the degree of incompetence regularly portrayed in their interactions.  It's as if in the end, Wolfe is portraying the citizens of Miami much like a stuffy anthropologist describing citizens of a third world country: As fascinating and impressive as these folks are in some aspects of their lives, one can clearly see they could never even dream of rising to my level of worldly sophistication.Another item Wolfe tends to embrace while appearing to criticize is pornography.  Sure, you need regular helpings of sex and death to keep a novel interesting, and part of what has always drawn me to Wolfe's writing is his highbrow depiction of lowbrow living.  But in this case, an analogy could be made between Wolfe as an author and the character Norman Lewis as a psychiatrist:  Lewis, while ostensibly undertaking the noble pursuit of curing pornography addicts is eventually exposed as being sex-obsessed himself.  As the book carries on, it seems as if Wolfe created Lewis to give himself a license to include unlimited sexual content.  It's not that I mind reading about sex, which I'm assuming is what compelled Wolfe to include so much of it in the book, but between all of Lewis's sex-related scenes and the numerous romantic relationships in the book, I sometimes felt more like I was reading a supermarket romance novel than a valid critique of modern culture.These things aside, the book still was worth reading.  I stopped twenty pages short of the ending yesterday and couldn't wait to resume for the conclusion.  Unlike some of his earlier novels, Wolfe does a good job concluding the novel by tying together and presenting satisfying resolutions to the numerous plots established throughout the text.  While Wolfe may not have ended his novel-writing career on the highest note he's ever struck, I applaud him for working his magic one more time.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Fear and love in a great American city
  

*by N***N on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 27, 2016*

This is a hugely engaging portrait of the jungle of human life in the mixed race US city of Miami. Read this and you will understand better some of the forces that drove Donald J Trump to power - and are pushing other voters to give the thumbs down to traditional politicians. In the Miami of 'Back to Blood', fear of other human beings is ever-present. The novel starts with the ostracism of a Cuban cop by family and community for the unexpected consequences of a heroic act which wreck the chances of a fellow Cuban. Reflecting the immigration theme of the title, the novel then shows the different racial groups (whites, blacks, Cubans, Haitians,Russians, Jews and others) fighting against each other and amongst themselves. Some of the worst acts are, in fact, carried out within the ethnic groups. A brilliant journalist, Tom Wolfe foresaw the Trump world and its creation themes before most of us. The novel brings in all levels of society - from the Russian oligarch to coach loads of elderly shoppers to the white journalists. For all that it paints a dangerous and brutal world, it is never cynical. The characters who emerge sane, alike and likeable are those who manage to control their the sense of fear and give a hand to others. Always amusing and realistic, 'Back to Blood' has some wonderful portrayals of human clashes - such as the meeting between the Cuban mayor and five Cuban underlings with the black police chief.

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*Last updated: 2026-03-12*