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A Comedy
by Charles Baxter
Book Reviewed by:From the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award and "one of our most gifted writers" (Chicago Tribune) comes a comic novel about a divorced Midwestern dad who takes a cutting-edge medical test and learns that he has a predisposition to murder.
In this fresh take on love and trouble in America, Brock Hobson, an insurance salesman and Sunday-school teacher, finds his equilibrium disturbed by the results of a predictive blood test. Baxter, a master storyteller, brings us a gradually building rollercoaster narrative, and a protagonist who is impertinent, searching, and hilariously relatable. From his good-as-gold, gentle girlfriend to the macho subcontractor guy his ex-wife left him for, not to mention his well-raised teenage kids, now exploring sex and sexuality, the secondary characters in Brock's life all contribute meaningfully to the drama, as increasing challenges to his sense of self and purpose crash over him. The final battle—no spoilers, but there is one—couldn't be more delightful, as this quick and bracing novel reminds us to choose the best people to love, accept the ones we love even if we didn't choose them, and love them all well.
1
Let's say you stabbed yourself in the leg by accident. Let's say you're bleeding all over the floor.
You'll need a doctor. In this town, to get to the clinic you go down the main street, turn right at the stoplight, and then just one block up ahead, past the strip mall, you'll see it. Its big glass sliding front doors are wide enough for two wheelchairs going in opposite directions to pass each other, and there's a good-sized parking lot out front for the sickos and their relatives. The spaces are usually filled. We have a lot of near-dead people in these parts. You can see them staggering in, breathing hard, young and old, propped up by their canes or walkers, accompanied by oxygen tanks, a real ghoul parade. Even the one-eyed badass tatted guys are hobbling in. It's probably the postindustrial air we breathe here, or maybe the nitrate-scented water we drink out of the tap. Could be herbicides we spray on everything or the fact that a third of the town has a drinking problem, and ...
The best part of this book is its irreverent tone, which sometimes stretches into absurdity. Some characters, like Brock's immensely practical girlfriend, seem very rooted in reality, while others are more overtly comedic. For instance, his ex and her new partner are diehard members of a ridiculous-sounding self-improvement cult. The interactions between such vastly different characters result in some laugh-out-loud dialogue. But the sharpest examples of the story's biting wit come in its treatment of cutting-edge medicine. It's a delightful sendup of profit-motivated private healthcare. While deliberately exaggerated, Blood Test raises real questions about the malleability of our identities. Just being told that he will commit a crime prompts a new attitude in Brock and alters the way people around him treat him. Once so sure in his uprightness, he begins to question the morality he's been taught all his life. It also points to the tendency many of us have to put faith in institutions without asking questions. While Brock understands that what he's being told by Generomics is bizarre, a part of him believes it because it's coming from Ivy League-educated doctors...continued
Full Review
(764 words)
(Reviewed by Jillian Bell).
Joseph O'Neill, author of Godwin
Blood Test is a funny, morally luminous, altogether irresistible caper that somehow, wonderfully, calls to mind both Nietzsche and Charles Portis. What a maestro Charles Baxter is.
Rats are polarizing animals. In some people, they evoke feelings of fear and disgust, thanks to their historical association with squalid settings and the spread of disease. But others find them adorable and friendly—the sort of creature that makes a great companion.
In the book Blood Test by Charles Baxter, the main character is sold a pet rat at the urging of a healthcare startup that predicts caring for it will benefit him. While his girlfriend is grossed out, his teenage children take to the new furry friend immediately, carrying it around on their heads and shoulders and feeding it off the dinner table.
Veterinarians say rats are much more intelligent and social than people give them credit for. They can be ...
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