Blood Test

A murky first novel by Lebanese poet and journalist Beydoun follows a young man's obsession with his dead uncle along his journey to manhood. The narrator is a young student who suddenly finds himself the head of his household after the deaths of his sickly father, his brother in an untimely accident and his legendary uncle some years earlier. Into the mix comes Safia, once engaged to the narrator's uncle and now married to a rich artist, Hashim, and with a young daughter. As the narrator sifts through his father's effects, speculating on his own past and his competitive relationship with his brother, he finds himself attracted to the older Safia, partly out of his identification with his larger-than-life uncle. The two become lovers, but as Safia's relationship with her husband deteriorates, the narrator realizes their complicated familial ties prohibit him from running away with her. Except for the immediate drama of the love affair, Beydoun's novel consists primarily of stories within stories about family members whose significance is largely unclear to the reader. (Nov.)