Blood Test: A Comedy ★★☆☆☆

A disappointing read. It starts with an interesting almost-scifi premise but eventually peters out to be a disappointing read. I kept reading waiting for the punch to land but it turned out to be a badly narrated tale of domestic boredom with stereotypical confused teenaged kids and an ex-wife with a deadbeat boyfriend.

Edition Read

• Edition Type: Hardcover
• Number of Pages: 224 pages
• Date First Published: October 15, 2024
• Publisher: Pantheon
• ISBN10: 0593700856
• ASIN: 0593700856
• Language: English

Description

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 excessively 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.

Source: GoodReads

Notable Highlights

On the other hand, if you don’t like zany you probably shouldn’t live in America. You can always go to somewhere like Switzerland, where you can gaze at the banks, the mountains, and the clocks. [loc. 292]

Tragic biographies are not my cup of tea. Well, it’s only five dollars retail if you buy it at Famous Discount, but as my father often used to say, a thing you don’t want is expensive at any price. [loc. 605]

When people are hospitalized, they don’t always notice what’s going on next to them. Burt had never been the most observant guy or the sharpest knife in the drawer anyway, so why would he be different now? A skull fracture would not brighten his dim bulb. [loc. 1844]

Some cars are naturally heroic and refuse to give up. They are like old dogs in love with their masters. [loc. 2765]

“Sometimes in life the urge to kill a fellow human being does arise. These things happen.”

“Well, it’s only five dollars retail if you buy it at Famous Discount, but as my father often used to say, a thing you don’t want is expensive at any price.”

“major life problems: the boredom I already mentioned, despair, nothingness, loneliness, soullessness, doubt, God’s death, global warming, an accompanying pandemic, and a total indifference about what’s for dinner.”

“Who is sitting in that empty chair?”

Highlights from Readwise, topped up with popular quotes from Goodreads.