2. Daria’s grandmother influenced many of Daria’s decisions, from what she studied at college to who she married. Was Daria right to listen to her grandmother? At the risk of hurting Boba, should Daria have tried earlier to become more independent? Was Boba right to push Daria to leave Odessa? Did Daria regret her choice?
3. Mr. Harmon commits a terrible act. What does he do to earn Daria’s forgiveness? Do you think he deserves to be forgiven? Which was more convincing—his actual apology or his subsequent acts of atonement, such as continuing to send food to Boba?
4. Anti-Semitism is an insidious problem in the former Soviet Union. Did you see through Olga? Did she hide her true feelings from Daria, or did Daria just not want to see the truth about her neighbor?
5. Daria corresponds with several men over the Internet. How is meeting someone over the Internet different from traditional dating? How is it the same? Are dating sites such as eHarmony or Match.com the same as international matchmaking sites?
6. There are clues that Tristan may not be a teacher. He writes “Should I of waited?” instead of “Should I have waited?” (114), and “Its the most beautiful place” rather than “It’s the most beautiful place” (105). Should Daria, who is a stickler for proper English, have noticed these mistakes, or did she simply see what she wanted to in Tristan?
7. Did Tristan lie when he said he lived near San Francisco? How did Tristan and Daria lie to each other? Was their relationship doomed from the start?
8. Daria is bilingual and can communicate with English-speakers. How was her friend Oksana at a disadvantage because she couldn’t speak English? Do you think Oksana would have married her husband if she had been able to understand him?
9. What do you think about Daria’s response to America? Is she too critical? Do you think that homesickness or depression is a factor in the way she feels? Would she have had the same observations if she had lived in a city and worked in an engineering firm?
10. Daria loves the English language. How is this love expressed? She also loves literature. Does Daria understand something about Harmon when he tells her about his father using a quote from Babel: “You want to live, but he makes you die twenty times a day” (71)? Is literature a form of solace? How do words sustain us?
11. When Daria is anxious, she thinks of irregular verbs; when she is unhappy or nervous she thinks of lines of poetry from Vladimir Mayakovsky (“my forehead melting the glass”) (112), or Anna Akhmatova (“And he did not take his eyes,/Staring blankly, from my ring.”) (295); when she is happy, she plays with words (fair/fare, board/bored). How does Daria use poetry and irregular verbs to express what other language cannot?
12. Moonlight in Odessa takes place before Skype, low-cost calling plans, and inexpensive pre-paid phone cards were available. Daria’s phone bill was several hundred dollars per month, and Tristan explained that they had a budget and couldn’t spend so much money. Do you understand his point of view? Was he unreasonable or was Daria? Was he genuinely trying to save money or was he trying to limit Daria’s contact with the outside world? How did he try to make Daria feel at home and help her to adapt?
13. Online matchmaking sites enjoy booming business. Why do you think some American men go abroad to look for a wife? Why would a smart, talented woman like Daria marry a man like Tristan? Can these marriages work?
14. What advice would you give to a foreign woman going to America to marry a stranger?
15. Several foreign women have been brutally murdered by their American husbands—an escalation of domestic violence in their relationships. Do you think that Tristan’s abuse would have escalated if Daria had stayed?
16. Who was your favorite character in the book? Why? Who was your least favorite character?
17. Which character was the most interesting to you? What aspect of the book surprised you the most? Could you relate to the dynamics between characters—for example, Daria’s relationship with her grandmother or the treacherous office politics at the shipping company?
First published in Great Britain 2010
This electronic edition published in 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc’
Copyright © 2009 by Janet Skeslien Charles
The quote on p. 28 is from The Portable Twentieth Century Russian Reader, edited by Clarence Brown
© Viking Penguin, Inc 1985. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The quote p. 114 is from Pushkin by T. J. Binyon, reprinted by
permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. © T. J. Binyon 2003
The quote on p. 286 is from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Richard Pevear
and Larissa Volokhonsky (Penguin, 2000) © Copyright Pevear and Volokhonsky 2000
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Janet Skeslien Charles, originally from Montana, divides her time between France and the United States. Moonlight in Odessa, her debut novel, was inspired by her two years in Odessa as a Soros Fellow. Visit her Web site at www.jskesliencharles.com.
Moonlight in Odessa Page 38
