Changes

|title=Back to Blood

|author=Tom Wolfe

|publisher=Vintage

|date=July 2013

|website=http://www.tomwolfe.com/

|summary=Themes class, race and the press will be familiar to fans of ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'' but the focus here is on Miami and not New York. Wolfe's biting satire of the rich remains as sharp as ever but there are also patches of rambling repetition. This may not be Wolfe on top form, but that's still more entertaining than many younger writers at the top of their game.

}}

He may now be 81, but there are no signs that Tom Wolfe is mellowing. Is his latest ''Back to Blood'' another magnificent addition to the Wolfe hall or is he merely bringing up the bodies? Well for me, it's a little of both. The book's great strength and also its main weakness are in the similarities between this Miami-set story of racial and cultural tension and his New York-set classic [[The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe|The Bonfire of the Vanities]]. There are familiar themes: newspapers, racial tension, the super-rich behaving disgracefully and lost in their own ego-mania, and a lively writing style shot through with angry humour, all of which bring to mind ''The Bonfire of the Vanities''. As there, he takes several characters from different worlds whose lives intersect in unexpected ways. But while taking those ingredients might seem a very welcome thing, the end result suffers in comparison.