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.
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.