Book Review: Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe takes a swipe at, among other things, ethnicity and class, pornography, reality TV, and the art world in his 2012 novel, "Back to Blood."  Like his previous novels Bonfire of the Vanities (set in New York) and A Man in Full (set in Atlanta) in style and storytelling, Wolfe turns his keen powers of observation to south Florida. Set in Miami, a city full of immigrants where the melting pot is broken and ethnic divisions are firmly entrenched, Back to Blood satires a city where everybody hates everybody. Hector Camacho, a muscled Cuban cop, rescues a would-be Cuban defector just yards from freedom and enrages his family and fellow Cubans. Hector's girlfriend, Magdelena, dumps him to be with her boss-- a psychiatrist who treats incredibly wealthy porn addicts and who uses his patients as social stepladders to open doors. Some of those billionaire addicts spend tens of millions of dollars in a matter of minutes at Art Basel, a swanky exclusive art show, just to out-do their rival billionaires. The black police chief defends a Cuban cop's racist language and actions, something that angers the black community and causes the Cuban mayor to call for the Cuban officer's dismissal. A Haitian professor only wants to be considered French, since Haitians are the lowest rung on Miami's social ladder, and is incensed when his dark-skinned son speaks Creole and adopts a gang-banger appearance. The professor's nearly-white daughter knows better than to bring up her ethnicity, since it changes other people's view of her.  A young newspaper reporter uncovers rumors that the Russian businessman who donated $70 million worth of art to the new Miami art museum actually donated faked reproductions. Yet the paper's editor, a WASP Yale graduate like the reporter, worries about how the story will make him, the paper, and the city, look like fools since the all colluded to rename the museum after the donor.
Tom Wolfe merges the intricate story lines almost flawlessly, switching points of view and storylines as fast as speedboats racing for Miami's elite and very private islands. He has created an engaging novel that is just a bit too long but entirely worth your time. Reading Back to Blood is like visiting a favorite museum with old friends, where you can relish what you believe to be masterworks while your friends regale you with lurid tales of dark places you'll never go or see. Any good satire will test the comfort of the reader, and this novel certainly has moments where the ethnic and sexual content seems to go too far, even for adult readers.  Yet that is classic Tom Wolfe, and this is one of the best he has offered in quite some time.