Charles Baxter’s new novel “Blood Test: A Comedy” is, as the kids say, “a vibe.”
Actually, I don’t know if the kids say that anymore, or if they ever said it to be honest, but it’s the best way I have to describe a book that announces itself as “a comedy” on the cover, but is also, at times odd, sweet, foreboding, sentimental and unsettling.
It is funny, primarily thanks to the book’s narrator, Brock Hobson, a purveyor of insurance in the so-Midwestern-it-hurts town of Kingsboro, Ohio, who takes a blood test provided by a company that declares they can use the test to predict your future.
According to the test, Hobson’s future augers all kinds of mayhem, including an escalating crime spree that will culminate in murder. This seems odd for a divorced father of two teens (Joe, 15, and Lena, 17) who live primarily with him and his longtime steady girlfriend (Trey), and Lena’s ever-present boyfriend, Pete.
There’s also ex-wife Cheryl who “ran off with a subcontractor” (Burt). Everybody save Trey seems to be financially dependent on Brock, who bears up under the responsibility with even-keeled good humor. When Cheryl needs money for a new roof, he complies. When Lena and Pete have nightly, noisy sex within his earshot, he considers the considerable evidence in front of him that the two are genuinely in love and keeps his mouth shut.
But post blood test, Brock Hobson’s quiet plugging through life is under threat. Exploring the prophecy, he steals some pruning shears from a desultory discount store that also traffics in straight-to-video movies like “Alien v. Bimbo,” “His Holiness Pope Robot” and “Voodoo Chiropractor,” and suddenly he experiences freedom.
“I can do anything I want to,” Hobson remarks. “I can go wild. I have a perfect alibi. The mainframe has said so.”
The potential for bad acts increases as the story moves forward. The outfit that provided the blood test calls him in for a follow-up where Hobson is given a handgun and a retainer contract with a New York law firm on call to defend him when he commits the predicted murder.
While the blood test and prophecy provide some structure for the tale, Baxter ranges freely, casting his sardonic eye on all aspects of American life and finding comedy and absurdity everywhere.
This is Baxter’s deep gift as a writer, a gift I have been receiving since first reading his short stories when I was in graduate school better than 30 years ago. His novels, “First Light,” and “Saul and Patsy” are among my favorites.
Every moment on the page has the potential to go off plum. In one scene, Hobson is joined on a park bench by a “gentleman vagrant” and an exchange involving a conspiracy theory about the British royal family ensues that is as inventive and arresting as anything Beckett’s famous bench dwellers (Vladimir and Estragon) had to say while waiting for Godot.
How does a novel manage to feel both grounded and real and wild and surreal at the same time? Some of it is Baxter’s style, the way his characters often speak in a strange vernacular, a kind of hyper-American English larded with the broken language of business and consumerism. There is also the setting, the immediate aftermath of the most acute period of the COVID-19 pandemic when it wasn’t clear what kind of normal we might return to.
It’s amazing what a book just barely over 200 pages can achieve, but this is what unfettered creativity looks like, unleashed by a writer who knows what he’s doing and wants to see what can still be done.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride
2. “James” by Percival Everett
3. “The Wedding People” by Alison Espach
4. “The Maid” by Nita Prose
5. “The Women” Kristin Hannah
— Mandy T., Chicago
This goes back a few years, but I think it’s still going to hit the spot in terms of grappling with issues of today, “Such a Fun Age” by Kiley Reid.
1. “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck
2. “Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville
3. “The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of Little Bighorn” by Nathaniel Philbrick
4. “White Noise” by Don DeLillo
5. “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates
— Richard P., Wilmette
For Richard, I’m going to recommend one of my favorite books about a man at sea emotionally (but not literally), “A Fan’s Notes” by Frederick Exley.
1. “Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng
2. “The Housemaid” by Freida McFadden
3. “It Ends with Us” by Colleen Hoover
4. “Pineapple Street” by Jenny Jackson
5. “Divergent” by Veronica Roth
— Blair M., Normal
“The Age of Miracles” by Karen Thompson Walker, a novel where the Earth’s rotation begins to slow, and humans have to try to adapt, should have the kind of intrigue that Blair seems drawn to.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
