If you had a chance to take a blood test that would predict your future behavior, would you do it?
That's what small-town Ohio insurance salesman Brock Hobson, the protagonist of Blood Test: A Comedy by veteran novelist Charles Baxter (The Sun Collective) decides to do. In this disarming tale of love, family, and the things that give our lives meaning, the consequences of that decision are both startling and hilarious.
Brock makes an "impulse purchase" of an expensive blood test offered by the vaguely described company Generomics Associates of Cambridge, Mass. When the results come back--boasting an accuracy rate of 94%--they reveal he will engage in criminal behavior, or as the doctor informs him, "felonies are definitely in your future." Indeed, in a follow-up call, a Generomics representative ominously warns him, "We see a murder. Committed by you."
Brock is a "low-wattage sort of person," an appealing everyman who possesses a vivid imagination and a droll sense of humor. He has such an orderly life he's known to his family as "Mr. Predictable"--manifested in his status as a respectable businessman who teaches Sunday school and prides himself on his charitable inclinations. So these dire prophecies provoke for him an understandable psychological and emotional tailspin, and the true joy of Baxter's story comes as he carefully peels back the layers of Brock's life to reveal the angst bubbling beneath its placid surface. 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. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer