cover image My Korean Deli

My Korean Deli

Ben Ryder Howe, read by Bronson Pinchot. Blackstone Audio, unabridged, seven CDs, 9 hours, $29.95 ISBN 978-1-4417-7933-5

Abandoning the rat race, Howe, a former editor at the Paris Review, and his wife buy a New York City deli for Howe's Korean mother-in-law in this charming memoir. Bronson Pinchot can be engaging, and he maintains the wit, energy, and momentum of the prose. He shifts character voices quite successfully, particular within scenes that take place at the deli. but his attempts at Korean accents, especially his vocalizing of his mother-in-law, are so broad and caricatured as to be almost unbearable. A Holt hardcover. (Mar.)