Fieldwork

If this is Mischa Berlinski's debut novel, I'm going to need to stand in line for his oncoming novels. This one just blew me away!

Fieldwork opens with an American journalist, oddly of the same name and religion (Jewish) as the author, who meets friend Josh O'Connor in Thailand, a country in which both are living and working at the time. Josh's request is that Mischa investigate the circumstances leading to the suicidal death of American anthropologist Martiya van der Leun. What was known was that she was a grad student working on a thesis about the Dyalo, a hill-tribe located in a rural area of northern Thailand. It was also known that, prior to her death, she had been incarcerated for ten years on a murder charge.

Through meetings and show more interviews with people who knew Martiya, Mischa slowly uncovers the truth about her situation. What, at first to me as a reader, seemed a divergent track and one that involved learning about several generations of the Walkers, a missionary family also living among the Dyalo, turned out to be very important to understand how missionary work affects isolated groups of people.

I was mesmerized by this tale. I'm not sure if it was because it involved cutural anthropology which, to me, is such a fascinating field or whether I was simply wondering how a Jewish man became involved investigating animism versus Christianity. In addition, the story reveals the fervor of an individual who engages in fieldwork or the "living with the tribe" experience of cultural anthropological study.

For anyone interested in other cultures, this is an amazing story. It's really up to the reader to decide if the Dyalo were, in fact, an invented people or based upon true hill-tribe inhabitants of northern Thailand. In order to decide, though, you must first read this book! show less

Although quite different in terms of subject matter from what I usually read, this book was, to my mind, highly original, opening up worlds to me that I never dreamt would be deeply engrossing. This is the story of a young man researching the disappearance of an anthropology doctoral student in the middle of writing her dissertation. She has gone to study and live with one of the indigenous tribes of Thailand for that dissertation, along the way encountering a family of American Christian missionaries that have lived in the mountains of Thailand for generations. Christian missionaries are not my ideal characters for pleasure reading, but here they are wrought with such respect and psychological deftness by the author that one is show more painlessly pulled into their world.

In another feat of authorial pyrotechnics, the Diyalo tribe, whose customs, language and very existence the author credibly invents, provides a classroom in which the world of anthropological academe is subtly critiqued. The best praise I can give this book is to say that the plot is organic, arising from the original elements of character and plot that the author has chosen. But nothing is ever showy. Aside from that fact that the book has oblique autobiographical elements from the author, nothing in it feels labored. One of the best books I read last year. Highly recommended.

Coincidentally I received this book from the early reviewers program a few months before I went to Thailand for the first time. I visited Chiang Mai and the environs where this is set and I must say this book gave me an "anthropological eye" which added a deeper level of appreciation to the tribal people that I met. show less

Mischa is on the path of a murderer. Martiya, a cultural anthropologist who lived with and tried to understand the Dyalo tribe in northern Burma/Thailand, murdered a missionary named David Walker. [Fieldwork] is the story of Mischa's pursuit of answers: why? and how did their paths cross? how did a promising but tortured anthropologist become a murderer and end up in a Thai prison?

Berlinski tells a great story and effectively moves among the stories within the story. His narrator is always present, but he gracefully yields the first-person narrative stage to other, more central characters. This novel is part ethnohistory, part murder mystery, and part exploration of the impact of culture on who each of us is --- and how invisible our show more own culture is to us! Berlinski explores the visceral and unquestioning attachment humans have to their most fundamental cultural beliefs, those things that are "obvious" and absolute to each of us. He amusingly tells of Martiya's attempts to draw explanations for rituals and mores out of the Dyalo people --- and their circular answers that boil down to "we do it that way because it is our custom." And while exploring and appreciating another culture is articulated as a valuable and worthwhile endeavor, Berlinski suggests that true immersion --- becoming a member of another culture comes with potentially devastating (lethal!) risks. Thought-provoking, entertaining, and compassionate, this is a book worth reading. show less

Thailand is the setting for Mischa Berlinski's Fieldwork. But modern Thailand plays the most minor and unimportant role of the three scenarios Berlinski depicts. Of the three, the fictional Dyalo, a remote hilltribe in Thailand's far north is the most interesting. Taking the perspective of an anthropologist who has situated herself among them, the novel is fascinating not only for the rituals it examines and the utterly exotic ways it explains but also for its incorporation of mostly unheard of academic theories of social anthropology. At times, the book even seems a condensed history of the discipline. There aren't too many works of fiction, after all, that are capable of working James Frazer's The Golden Bough into the plot in a show more meaningful and interesting way.

Otherwise, the form of the novel is almost a literary version of Citizen Kane, revolving around a mysterious death and a murder. This in turn leads to the exploring of the second group due anthropological uncovering--fundamentalist American missionaries devoted to converting the heathen Dyalo to Christianity. What the narrator and sometimes protagonist in the story reveals is that both the Dyalo and the missionaries operate from a similar perspective on the world. Both peoples are encased in a worldview where demons and spirits populate the world and determine human fate. It's to Berlinski's credit, by the way, that he represents the missionaries as deserving of sympathetic observation as much as would normally be the case for the Dyalo alone. The exotic and unknown and sometimes unknowable worlds of both peoples are rendered with some subtlety as well as nuance.

Mischa Berlinski, finally, is not only the author of this mystery, the name is also that given to the lead narrator/protagonist. And it is his story that is used for the side trips into modern Thailand. This is also the weakest part of the novel. Berlinski's observations about expats in Thailand mostly do little beyond presenting cliched images. It sometimes seems as if he has made a checklist of foreigners' faults and oddities from sources such as Thai Visa Forum--available online, for anyone interested. He also gets a few things wrong. But he also gets one thing very right, the world of Thailand right before the smartphone revolution brought global immediacy to the remotest of Thai villages. Berlinski's Thailand, barely 12 years in the past, is now long gone. In its place is something that may be much more harsh and violent, with fading traditions replaced with a megamall in every provincial Thai capital or major city. show less

This was a fabulous book! Rich in descriptions, plotlines, characters and a pleasure to read. The main character, Martiya, is a Berkeley-trained anthropologist on her first fieldwork expedition. The book interweaves her character's experiences as a woman and an anthropologist, juxtaposed against the experiences of a family of missionaries in the same tribal village in Thailand where she is working. The fictional hill tribe of the Dyalo are described with such richness that it is hard to believe they do not actually exist. The author may have used a variety of hill tribes as his basis for the Dyalo people.

The book is also a wonderful murder mystery, with the events leading up to the crime committed by Martiya focusing on her mental show more state and the changes in her relationships because of her fieldwork.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Epilogue and Notes on the Sources, which clarified many aspects of the author's story and writing. I was especially intrigued by his references to other books in the genre of the anthropological memoir, which will push me forward to some other gems, I'm sure! show less

Now here’s a thing. When my mate Candi recommends a book, it’s worth listening to. Fieldwork by Mischa Berlininski is a great example of this, so please read her fabulous review of it:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5757449943

Fieldwork interweaves 3 narratives: A journalist and his girlfriend living as expats in Northern Thailand, a Christian family committed to converting people, and an anthropologist living with the Dyalo people. The Dyalo are fictitious but it's based on the Lisu people from Northern Thailand. Their conversion to Christianity is central to the novel.
The narrator moves to Thailand with his girlfriend, who is employed as an English teacher at an international school in Chaing Mai. He is approached by an old show more friend to investigate the story of Martiya van der Leun, an anthropologist imprisoned in Chaing Mai prison for the murder of a young Christian missionary. Martiya had spent a number of years living with and studying the Dyalo people.
Berlinski develops a fascinating narrative that questions the ethics of both modern anthropology and Christianity.
It’s an enthralling tale of anthropology, spirituality, linguistics, religion, witchcraft, sexual taboos and ethnography. Throw in a murder, a love story and the curiosity of a journalist who becomes obsessed by the story.

The writing is clever and ambitious, the conclusion is somewhat unexpected. A brilliantly researched page turner, as a debut novel it’s an utter triumph. Will I read a better book this year? I’m not sure about that. Thanks again, Candi. show less

Flash back to my school’s “Blind Date with a Book” exercise last January. The librarians wrapped library books like Christmas presents with codes on them, and you could pick one up, let them use the code to check it out for you, and take it back to your dorm to unwrap it. In my package, I found Fieldwork, Mischa Berlinski’s debut novel. I consider myself quite lucky to have done so, because I never would have noticed it otherwise — it’s a captivating story masked by a rather bland title and cover design. Stephen King noted this in his otherwise complimentary review in Entertainment Weekly, saying, “why, why, why would a company publish a book this good and then practically demand that people not read it? Why should this show more book go to waste?”

Feeling obligated to at least try the book, even though it focused on subjects that don’t ordinarily grab my attention, I started in. By the end of the second chapter, I was snared – I couldn’t put it down. Don’t be fooled by appearances; read this book. show less