COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN

A young pastry chef returning to Madrid after years in the U.S. becomes entangled with a wealthy Spanish NYU student in this debut novel.

Demetrio has lived in New York City with no documents since he was 8 years old and has spent his entire adult life working at the same restaurant. But when, at 24, he finally pursues a more prestigious pastry chef position, his fears about his lack of papers come to fruition, and he finds himself on a plane back to a country he hardly remembers. On that trans-Atlantic flight, he connects with Jacobo, the charming scion of a right-wing businessman. A Jane Austen–esque illness strands Demetrio with Jacobo and his family once they disembark, and before long, the two are inseparable and inching toward a romance. If only the many points of tension set up along the way—Demetrio’s increasing financial dependence on Jacobo, Jacobo’s father’s conservatism, Demetrio’s uneasy position as a stranger in his nominal homeland, and the two men's growing attraction to each other—could be felt by the reader. Fuentes has an unfortunate tendency to stretch credulity on multiple fronts. The glimpses into Demetrio’s artistry as a chef are surprisingly few and often underrealized, with our protagonist pursuing unlikely activities like making ganache on a beach. Jacobo never emerges as a complete human being with specific ambitions and foibles, and the novel seems uninterested in what it means for him to accept money and support from his fascist family. Demetrio’s narration occasionally sparkles, but the dialogue is stilted and sometimes dated beyond the novel’s 2007 setting. Opportunities for conflict arise only to disappear a handful of pages later, and by the time a surprise inclusion in a will is introduced, it has become clear that the characters are immune to meaningful consequences to their actions.

What should be a thoughtfully constructed, sensuous confection falls flat.