Blood Test

by Charles Baxter

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Literary Fiction; Humorous Fiction

Synopsis

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 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.

Release date: October 15, 2024

Publisher: Pantheon

Print pages: 224

Sample

“There’s one other thing,” she said, looking down at the other sheet of paper. “I just saw a patient who stabbed himself in the leg. He had . . . went a little crazy, but it was predicted.”

I ignored her bad grammar. “Predicted?” I asked. “Predicted how?”

“Well,” she said, sitting back. “There’s this start-up company, Generomics Associates. Bunch of Harvard and MIT graduates, they tell me, mostly in molecular biology and computer science. Genome plus Geronimo, like the Indigenous warrior. They’re in Cambridge, the Massachusetts one, across that river from Boston? And they’re marketing this blood test, analyzing your genome, DNA and so on. It’s somewhat secret, what they’re doing. The jury is still out on the science of this thing, but we have . . . I need to tell you that your insurance won’t pay for it. It’s still somewhat speculative and experimental, this test they’ve invented.” She waited. “I have my doubts about it, myself. If it’s what they say it is, whoa. But if you want to pay for it, you can get it. Results come back in two, three weeks.”

“So what does it tell you?”

“Well.” She smiled, as if she was divulging a secret. “As I said, they take your blood sample, get your entire genome, run it through a supercomputer, and then they digitize it and, you know, they have these algorithms that . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I’m not sure how they do it. I’m just a country doctor. But we have . . . It’s been decided that we should tell people about it, in case they want it.” She probably meant: the clinic gets a kickback if you agree to this thing.

“But what does the test say?” I asked. “I’m confused.”

“It’s predictive,” she informed me, twiddling a ballpoint pen between her fingers.

“Like what diseases I’m going to get? Hereditary, like that?”

“Yes. Well, and also no. No, not this test.” She glanced at the clock on the desk. “It’s, I don’t know . . . I suppose I should give you the literature. I’ve got the brochure over there. What it does is, it predicts behavior, tells you what you’re going to do before you do it, based on the . . . arrangements in your genetic structure, your psychology, and your past and your what-have-you. Plus your faith history. Plus how you fill out the questionnaire. Plus who knows what. Your internet purchases and browsing history—things like that. With these computers, and the fancy algorithms, and the way you answer their questions and stuff, they can get very specific. There’s nothing these mainframes don’t know. They can figure out anybody. Like that person I was telling you about. They told him he was going to stab himself in the leg, and, guess what, he went and did it. Or so I heard.” She stopped twiddling the pen. “Probably it was an accident. Who stabs himself in the leg? Nobody! Anyway, science marches on.”

“Pretty specific scientific guess marching on, right?”

“You can say that again,” she said, and when she nodded, her glasses hanging on their chain trembled a little. “Anyway, you want this test, totally your decision by the way, we can order it up for you. Results take two or three weeks to come back. Did I say that already? But I should warn you: it’s expensive—couple of thousand dollars.” She turned away from me and fastened her gaze on the computer screen on her desk. I noticed that she repeated herself, pure absentmindedness on her part, an inability to live in the moment thanks to routine boredom.

“I’ll do it,” I told her decisively, and she signed the test order sheet before handing it to me. Maybe I should have been more careful, done a bit of research first, but I’ve always been curious about what I was about to do. Everybody including me says I’m as predictable as a clock. I have had very few problems with impulsive behavior. And addictions? They never had a grip on me. But what the hell. For the two thousand dollars, I could buy this fortune cookie and find out my future and then eat the cookie. What was I going to do with what remains of my life? I would have liked to know myself. Know thyself! A directive from ancient times. Besides, who doesn’t want to know the future?

Call it an impulse purchase.

Someone came in and took a vial of my blood. That was it. That simple. They gave me the questionnaires, etc. Something about all this was fishy, but I was in. I had signed up. There was a dotted line and my name was on it.