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by Janet Skeslien Charles
Odessa, Ukraine, is the humor capital of the former Soviet Union, but in an upside-down world where waiters earn more than doctors and Odessans depend on the Mafia for basics like phone service and medical supplies, no one is laughing. After months of job hunting, Daria, a young engineer, finds a plum position at a foreign firm as a secretary. But every plum has a pit. In this case, it's Mr. Harmon, who makes it clear that sleeping with him is job one. Daria evades Harmon's advances by recruiting her neighbor, the slippery Olga, to be his mistress. But soon Olga sets her sights on Daria's job.
Daria begins to moonlight as an interpreter at Soviet Unions(TM), a matchmaking agency that organizes 'socials' where lonely American men can meet desperate Odessan women. Her grandmother wants Daria to leave Ukraine for good and pushes her to marry one of the men she meets, but Daria already has feelings for a local. She must choose between her world and America, between Vlad, a sexy, irresponsible mobster, and Tristan, a teacher nearly twice her age. Daria chooses security and America. Only it's not exactly what she thought it would be…
A wry, tender, and darkly funny look at marriage, the desires we don’t acknowledge, and the aftermath of communism, Moonlight in Odessa is a novel about the choices and sacrifices that people make in the pursuit of love and stability.
"Charles paints a tender, bittersweet portrait of Ukraine and Odessa.... A lively, entertaining debut—chick lit with edge." - Kirkus Reviews
"This darkly humorous debut explores the world of eastern European mail-order brides and the men who finance them...The teetering dance between humor and heartbreak burns through this tale that takes place at the intersection of love and money, East and West, male and female." - Publishers Weekly
"Charles's first novel vividly contrasts life in Odessa, a city whose citizens are impoverished and sometimes prejudiced but nevertheless proud, with the materialism and isolation of life in America." - Library Journal
This information about Moonlight in Odessa was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Originally from Montana, Janet Skeslien Charles lives in Paris, where she leads writing workshops at the Left Bank bookshop Shakespeare & Company. Moonlight in Odessa was inspired by her two years as a Soros Fellow in Odessa.
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