Countries of Origin
A Novel
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- ¥700
発行者による作品情報
WINNER OF THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT NOVEL • This stunning debut chronicles a tumultuous, passionate love affair between two young men from vastly different worlds during one, extraordinary summer in Spain, in what is ultimately a meditation on identity, class, belonging and desire.
“Full of so many pleasures—literary, culinary, amorous… Fuentes has created something beautiful, honest, heartbreaking and hopeful.” —Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is Lost
It is 2007, and twenty-four-year-old Demetrio is a celebrated pastry chef in New York at the French restaurant Le Bourrelet. This will be his seventh year as the pâtissier and the chef-owner, stern but paternal, feels he should move on. When Demetrio is offered a position as head of pastries at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, he wants nothing more than to accept it.
But as an undocumented immigrant he is terrified that he will be found out, so Demetrio makes the difficult decision to return permanently to his homeland which he has not seen since he was a small child. It will mean leaving the only family he knows—his beloved uncle Chus who has brought him up. On his flight to Madrid, Demetrio sits next to the handsome, playful, and sensitive Jacobo, a student at NYU going home to his aristocratic, fascist family and there is an instant, unacknowledged electricity between them.
In dimly lit bars in Madrid and on pebbled beaches by the sea far outside the city, Demetrio and Jacobo’s subtle but intense relationship unfolds. Demetrio is tortured by a fear of true intimacy and by anxiety about their class difference. Both are struggling with their identities and sexuality, and they avoid their true feelings until a family tragedy sets them on a collision course back into one another’s lives.
Countries of Origin is powerfully sensual and moving. Javier Fuentes takes you on a journey that will immerse you in the intense and heartbreaking emotions and conflicts of love and loss.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lambda Literary fellow Fuentes debuts with a lush but meandering romance about a gay pastry chef returning to his native Spain. At age eight, Demetrio Simancas's mother sent him to live with his polyamorous gay uncle in New York. Sixteen years later, in 2007, the undocumented Demetrio's fake Social Security number raises flags when he tries to move on from his pastry chef job. Forced to return to a country he only half remembers, he meets Jacobo, an attractive, hard-partying NYU student and son of an aristocratic mother and powerful, far-right father, on the plane. Jacobo brings Demetrio, who has fallen suddenly ill, back to his estate, where he charms Jacobo's mother, Patricia. When Jacobo, who presents as straight, finally makes a move, however, Demetrio violently rebuffs him, concerned about Jacobo's drug habit. While sorting out his complicated feelings for Jacobo, Demetrio accepts a new kitchen job and grapples with his waning passion for cooking. The plot drifts by, with conflicts emerging and then swiftly disappearing (both Jacobo's drug problem and his potential closeted-ness are never really resolved), on the way to an implausible conclusion. It's got style, but it's light on substance.
