This month at Towne Book Center & Cafe‘s book club read My Korean Deli by Ben Ryder Howe
I hafta say it wasn’t my fave. I didn’t hate it, but I just couldn’t relate to the main character. Here’s a blurb from Goodreads:
It starts with a gift, when Ben Ryder Howe’s wife, the daughter of Korean immigrants, decides to repay her parents’ self-sacrifice by buying them a store. Howe, an editor at the rarefied Paris Review, agrees to go along. Things soon become a lot more complicated. After the business struggles, Howe finds himself living in the basement of his in-laws’ Staten Island home, commuting to the Paris Review offices in George Plimpton’s Upper East Side townhouse by day, and heading to Brooklyn at night to slice cold cuts and peddle lottery tickets. My Korean Deli follows the store’s tumultuous life span, and along the way paints the portrait of an extremely unlikely partnership between characters with shoots across society, from the Brooklyn streets to Seoul to Puritan New England. Owning the deli becomes a transformative experience for everyone involved as they struggle to salvage the original gift—and the family—while sorting out issues of values, work, and identity.
Even though I couldn’t relate to the character, I am eager to see what a New York deli looks like inside. I will go in search of a deli when I’m in New York later this month to attend Book Expo America. Stay tuned…