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.
