He’s written something closer to a farce — a story in which every predicament is intentionally absurd ... After Baxter has laid out the parade of selfish, money-hungry, blindly tech-admiring elements of contemporary life, the black comedy of the words shines through.
Funny ... As with any successful knockout punch, part of its force is that you don’t see it coming ... By announcing itself a comedy, Blood Test isn’t wrong, but it undersells itself. It is a profound and unsettling — and, yes, frequently funny — snapshot of our current tribulations, cast in relief against the stubborn peculiarities of the American character.
Absurd ... The story charges along so boisterously that it’s easy to forget Baxter is batting around some of the weightiest concerns of human experience, from the nature of fate and the boundaries of free will to the power of unconditional love. Fortunately, he remembers the first rule of comic novels: Keep it short ... Baxter is still fearlessly embracing his own zaniness.
Billed as a comedy, and it is a comedy mostly in that it is not a tragedy. Is it funny? Yes, but darkly so; its humor, which is delightful, is wrapped around truths and drama and so, while we laugh, we also feel a shot of anxiety. It is a wonderfully crafted book, more complicated than it first might seem ... The humor in the book — and there is plenty, including a nod to slapstick involving a banana peel — comes from the absurdity of the situation and from the narrator’s droll asides ... A novel about family — the way they love each other and protect each other and look out for each other.
The target of satire is never clearly defined. While there’s plenty to lampoon in today’s tech hubris, and ample opportunity to poke nervous fun at our own mystification around the unseen algorithms that shape our lives, Baxter introduces a third element whose satiric potential remains under-explored: the entire book, we come to understand, is a manuscript Brock has produced ... His ear for comedy in the ha ha sense falters here. The specifics are slightly off ... This book aims to be a tragicomic compendium of the way we live now, but its mishit notes make it hard to settle in and enjoy the music.
Strolls through dystopian paranoia with genial humor, an occasional barbed observation, a reliance on cultural clichés, and little depth ... Baxter maintains a narrative full of jokes, digressions, repetitions, and frustrations, with occasional glances at big ideas like free will, good and evil, and the decline of America.
Quietly zany ... May offer a dark view of aspects of middle America, but it is consistently amusing and is an expression of its author’s deep fascination with and love of flawed, eccentric Americans as well as a celebration of old-fashioned values.
Baxter’s prose is a pleasure; he maintains a pensive tone shot through with wit and cleverness ... The novel’s central conceit — a blood test that claims seemingly impossible predictive power — serves as a sharp satire of our data-driven, algorithmic age ... Baxter has crafted a testament to his enduring literary talent as well as a remarkably relevant work that speaks to the lives led by normal people these days, a book that blends humor with profound social commentary, offering a severe yet thoroughly entertaining exploration of contemporary American life. It is a necessary novel for right now.
The best part of this book is its irreverent tone, which sometimes stretches into absurdity. Unrealistically heightened details tip into the realm of the delightfully bizarre, but placed against a backdrop of ordinary family drama and an economically depressed town, the story feels relatable ... Readers who enjoy literary fiction with a hefty dose of dry humor will get a kick out of Baxter's novel.
A deeply funny, profound, and timely comedy about the contemporary overreliance on data to predict everything and anything, Baxter’s latest is another excellent tale to add to his much admired and enjoyed body of work.
Disarming ... Anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed by moments of sheer absurdity amid the pace of life in 21st-century America will identify with Brock Hobson's pain and pleasure and celebrate Charles Baxter's skill in capturing it.
Entertaining if slight ... The ending feels hasty, but Baxter’s sharp observations and ear for dialogue are on full display, and he molds a distinctive protagonist in Brock, who thinks of himself as righteous even as he judges others and corrects their grammar. Readers will love seeing Brock break bad.
