Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
Berlinski's mesmerizing first novel blurs the line between fact and fiction. A young American c... read full description
Berlinski's mesmerizing first novel blurs the line between fact and fiction. A young American c... read full description
reviews
May 11, 2008
Kate
rated it: 
This was a strange, but intriguing work. The mystery and culture were both elegant and engaging, the characters well drawn and real. However, the author was self indulgent in several ways: most obviously by casting himself as the narrator and most notably by suddenly steering away from the main story to delve into a too-detailed family history that seems like it could have been its own novel--and not one I would have read. In the end, the author reveals that he is himself an anthropologist and t
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Nov 30, 2011
Debra
rated it: 
Stephen King recommended book. He says: "This is a great story. It has an exotic locale, mystery, and a narrative voice full of humor and sadness. Reading Fieldwork is like discovering an unpublished Robertson Davies novel; as with Davies, you can't stop reading until midnight (good), and you don't hate yourself in the morning (better). It's a Russian doll of a read, filled with stories within stories. The first belongs to the book's narrator, also called Mischa Berlinski. The fictional Be
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May 20, 2008
Sunni
rated it: 
This was given to me as an audio download gift from my stepdaughter, an anthropologist. We both listened at the same time. She didn't like it (thought it was too superficial a depiction of the field of anthropology and the reader got on her nerves); but I loved it.
This story had me in its grip on so many levels. First, it is a murder mystery (which I love) and I found it set up and then unraveled in a very interesting way. The reader, through the protaganist, becomes the anthropologi More...
This story had me in its grip on so many levels. First, it is a murder mystery (which I love) and I found it set up and then unraveled in a very interesting way. The reader, through the protaganist, becomes the anthropologi More...
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Apr 12, 2008
Ruth
rated it:
This novel (whose existence I learned of through Rodney's Goodreads, if I'm remembering right) was such a delight. With its thoroughness (e.g., some would say it spends too long on the various generations of the missionary family) it is a bit reminiscent of an anthropological study--appropriate to the story of a mysterious anthropologist-turned-murderer. But it's bursting with wonderful subplots & sensory details & really captures the strangeness of expatriate white Westerners' lives & degrees o
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Mar 26, 2008
Jes
rated it: 
i picked fieldwork by mischa berlinski on the recommendation of my local independent bookseller. (since that’s how i found the history of love, it didn’t even occur to me that i wouldn’t utterly fall for this book too.)
it’s an interesting premise: mischa berlinski (and we could spend the rest of the afternoon discussing the implications of a novelist naming his fictional protagonist after himself), while in thailand with his girlfriend, stumbles on this improbable murder story. an a More...
it’s an interesting premise: mischa berlinski (and we could spend the rest of the afternoon discussing the implications of a novelist naming his fictional protagonist after himself), while in thailand with his girlfriend, stumbles on this improbable murder story. an a More...
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Aug 09, 2008
Aj
rated it:
Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski is a well-crafted, absorbing novel that fuses travel, anthropology and mystery. In many respects it feels a bit like a Paul Theroux travelogue, albeit Berlinski is far kinder to most of his subjects. And while this is a work of fiction, the main character certainly bears a strong resemblance to the author in more than just name.
How do I know this? I worked with Mischa briefly in 2001. Though our ‘relationship’ can be, at best, characterized as a casual a More...
How do I know this? I worked with Mischa briefly in 2001. Though our ‘relationship’ can be, at best, characterized as a casual a More...
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Jan 26, 2008
Doug
rated it:
A lot of hard work and research went into this excellent work of historical fiction. It is fiction, as the author reminds us at the end of the book and yet, the characters are so excellently described and brilliant that you could swear that this is a biography. The main character is a dedicated, unselfish, female anthropologist doing work with a tribe of Chinese/Thais in Northern Thailand. We find out early on that she may be involved in a murder and the author painstakingly researches her life
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Feb 26, 2008
Kristen
rated it:
I liked this book a lot, but it unravels too quickly at the end. I don't find Martiya's final undoing to be very convincing, nor inevitable. A tragic sense of doom should be hanging over her a lot more heavily than it does. Maybe the distance I'm feeling from the plot is due to Mischa Berlinksi's writing style -- he is very fast-moving and detached, like he's afraid to lose the reader's interest. This doesn't leave a lot of time for feeling characters' pain. (Also hard to feel the pain of a char
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Aug 08, 2008
Lauren
rated it:
In a way, this was high-grade guilty reading: travelogue and murder-mystery. The book dragged a bit in the middle and could have benefited from less time drawing out the native encounters of a graduate student and more time teasing out the conclusion. I was disappointed by characters who were all but forgotten in the end, but I think that would have mattered less if the book had maintained a faster clip.
The book was incredibly cinematic, but the payoff in the end was not what it cou More...
The book was incredibly cinematic, but the payoff in the end was not what it cou More...
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Feb 03, 2008
I honestly don't know how to rate this book. On the sentence level, it's no great shakes, but wow, is it a good story. As an anthropologist, I can't help but enjoy the fictive ethnographic detail, the references to famous and infamous "forefathers" (Malinowski, Pritchard, etc.), to the long, drawn-out saga of fieldwork, with its dislocations and its epiphanies. There's a fascinating way in which the obsessive Curiosity of the anthropologist gets mirrored in the obsessive search for
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Mar 19, 2008
Jill
rated it:
In order to enjoy "Fieldwork," you must have an interest in world religions and spirituality. A good deal of the book observes the Dialo tribal rituals in Thailand.
I found the book to be interesting, rye and fast-paced. The only part I thought slowed down the book was the background of the Walkers--the missionary family whom Martiya visited and ultimately murdered youngest son David.
My suggestion is to listen to the book. I don't know that I would have caught th More...
I found the book to be interesting, rye and fast-paced. The only part I thought slowed down the book was the background of the Walkers--the missionary family whom Martiya visited and ultimately murdered youngest son David.
My suggestion is to listen to the book. I don't know that I would have caught th More...
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Jan 16, 2009
Fieldwork, by Mischa Berlinski. B-plus. Narrated by William Dufris, produced by Tantor Audio, and downloaded from audible.com.
When his girlfriend takes a job as a schoolteacher in northern Thailand, Mischa Berlinski goes along for the ride, working as little as possible for one
of Thailand's English-language newspapers. One evening a fellow expatriate tips him off to a story. A charismatic American anthropologist, Martiya van
der Leun, is being imprisoned in a Thai prison More...
When his girlfriend takes a job as a schoolteacher in northern Thailand, Mischa Berlinski goes along for the ride, working as little as possible for one
of Thailand's English-language newspapers. One evening a fellow expatriate tips him off to a story. A charismatic American anthropologist, Martiya van
der Leun, is being imprisoned in a Thai prison More...
Nov 28, 2011
April the Cheshire Meow
rated it:
It's brilliant. A true clash of civilizations, gods and cultures. The reader gets an overview of the work of anthropologists and Christian missionaries, as well as a taste of what it is to live in a culture so different and comparatively primitive in comparison to our Western world. The differences are so profound it casts doubt on whether any cultures so materially and spiritually apart can have common ground other than good will to meet and understand each other. The questions I found mysel
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Sep 26, 2011
Ashok
rated it:
I first read about this book in Stephen King's EW column where he praised it highly. I ordered the hardcover at once, and then found it curiously difficult to get into - it lay on my shelf for almost a year. I finally picked it up a couple of weeks ago and began reading it and enjoying it, at first. The pleasure soon evaporated as the book turned into yet another backpacker novel - and I don't mean that in a good way. It reads like a too-rich too-spoiled NY WASP kid travelled to the Far East, di
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Apr 25, 2011
Beatles24
rated it:
This is a truly serendipitous find. I would not normally pick up a book with such an “eloquent” title and not think it was not a book on boring anthropological investigations. That said, one of the best things about writing a book review for the whole world (or in my case with the world being an oyster and all that there are probably about 2 people likely to read this) to see is to showcase one’s spectacular ignorance. This book is a gem of a find and were it not for a thoughtful birthday gif
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Feb 27, 2011
I appreciated and enjoyed Berlinski's novel that infuses scholarly information on anthropology with a suspense story set in rural Thailand. It is written in a memoir form (although it is fiction). I did wonder why he used his real name rather than changing it. This distracted me at times--it made it difficult for me to separate the author from the narrator, which is important in any book that is not a memoir or autobiography. I do think it would have been helpful if he had changed his name. I th
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May 16, 2009
Jessica
rated it:
Fieldwork is the story of a journalist who becomes obsessed with the story of an anthropologist. Both the journalist (who inexplicably has been given the same name as the book's author, Mischa Berlinski) and the anthropologist (Martiya van der Leun) are Americans who have ended up living in Thailand. Martiya went there to do fieldwork as part of her doctoral studies; Mischa went because his girlfriend signed up to teach English there for a year. Early on, we learn that Martiya killed a missionar
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Dec 16, 2011
Julie at All Ears
rated it:
This book started out with a lot of promise. An American anthropologist, Martiya van der Leun, living in a remote Thai village, is tried for murder of a young Christian missionary. The narrator of this story, Mischa Berlinski (who names their main characters after themselves?), is an American ex-pat living in Thailand as a freelance writer. When he hears about Martiya's story, she has been in prison for several years and has recently committed suicide. Armed with some notes from her journal,
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Nov 08, 2010
Sandra
rated it:
Fieldwork starts with a compelling mystery. An American expatriate journalist in Thailand is approached by a friend who tells him a story about another expat who, seemingly without motive, shot and killed a much-beloved young missionary.
The main character, named Mischa (like the author) starts investigating, and soon becomes obsessed with finding out the truth about what happened.
The story is about what happens to expatriates who struggle to understand the foreign cultures a More...
The main character, named Mischa (like the author) starts investigating, and soon becomes obsessed with finding out the truth about what happened.
The story is about what happens to expatriates who struggle to understand the foreign cultures a More...
May 19, 2010
Jennifer
rated it:
This is without a doubt, one of the best books I have ever read. This story of an anthropologist who murders a missionary in Thailand reads like the best journalistic nonfic, from the details of the remote Thai tribe's customs to the footnotes that referred to specific personal letters that belonged to the anthropologist. But here's the kicker--IT'S ALL FICTION. If I didn't have so many books on my TBR, I would read it again to see how the frick the author pulled off such a feat. And he's the sa
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Feb 05, 2009
Mischa Berlinski originally intended to write an account of the real-life Lisu tribe of Thailand, but held scant interest in the project until he decided to fictionalize the natives and turned his research into a novel. In this readable and clever debut, told almost entirely in backstory, Berlinski explores the problems inherent in trying to assume the perspective of another person or culture and the enduring conflict between faith and science. While he treats each perspective with genuine empat
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Dec 05, 2010
Peregrine 12
rated it: 
After a friend sent me a copy of Fieldwork, along with Stephen King's glowing review from Entertainment Weekly (April 6, 2007), I thought I was sure to love this book. I wanted to love it. But I didn't. I was occasionally bored and sometimes frustrated by the side-paths the author kept taking from the actual main characters.
Two things killed it for me: 1) Most of the book is relayed in a third-person history of GENERATIONS of people - many people, too many for me to keep up with someti More...
Two things killed it for me: 1) Most of the book is relayed in a third-person history of GENERATIONS of people - many people, too many for me to keep up with someti More...
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May 15, 2010
Megan
rated it:
WHERE: Picked this up at a half priced books in Redmond. I think I liked the cover (and the price, of course)
AND? It was pretty good! I was frustrated with the ending, but, I enjoyed the story -- the characters were well formed, and the author spent a lot of time building a history that brought you to the climax with a nice roar.
HOW WAS THE ENDING? Mm, so-so. The story is written a bit back-to-front, in that you know the end when you get started, you just don't know More...
AND? It was pretty good! I was frustrated with the ending, but, I enjoyed the story -- the characters were well formed, and the author spent a lot of time building a history that brought you to the climax with a nice roar.
HOW WAS THE ENDING? Mm, so-so. The story is written a bit back-to-front, in that you know the end when you get started, you just don't know More...
Apr 18, 2010
Michael
rated it:
A meandering, but pleasantly paced, existential and semi-literary detective story of a 20 year-old murder in Thailand involving missionaries and anthropologists and a hodgepodge of eccentric characters.
The point-of-view changes consistently from the under-employed journalist narrator to the different characters he interviews, going back multiple generations and following a myriad of anecdotal plot detours. The story switches back and forth from first-person to third-person, until a More...
The point-of-view changes consistently from the under-employed journalist narrator to the different characters he interviews, going back multiple generations and following a myriad of anecdotal plot detours. The story switches back and forth from first-person to third-person, until a More...
Jan 10, 2012
Kim
rated it:
Mischa Berlinski writes himself in as the narrator of this fake memoir, ex-pat journalist story. An anthropologist working in Thailand is jailed after murdering a missionary and Berlinski as fictionalized narrator compiles the story of the missionary family and the anthropologist, setting the fictional Dyalo people between them in a sort of post-colonial love triangle.
The book is engaging and interesting, a good mystery, well-written with well developed characters. It is a very clever More...
The book is engaging and interesting, a good mystery, well-written with well developed characters. It is a very clever More...
Apr 10, 2010
Cassie
rated it:
This book started out well. The writing style was very readable without being dumbed down like a lot of popular fiction is. It contains a lot of interesting descriptions of life in Thailand. The story of Martiya was one that I was interested in and I definately wanted to keep reading to find out what had happened.
About halfway through the book I lost interest. Most of the book is a major digression from the story that peaked my interest in the begining. I finished reading it because More...
About halfway through the book I lost interest. Most of the book is a major digression from the story that peaked my interest in the begining. I finished reading it because More...
Sep 21, 2011
Patrick
rated it:
I really wanted to read Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski as soon as I read about it when it was short-listed for the National Book Award in 2007. It is a fascinating murder story set in the hill tribe region of Northern Thailand near Chang Mai, a place that I have visited several times in the past. It concerns the murder of a missionary named David Walker by an anthropologist who had gone native so to speak. But it is more than a mystery story, it is also a fictionalized memoir, and a well-resea
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Mar 22, 2010
Zoe
rated it:
A great read for anyone interested in Northern Thailand, this story within a story explores the tensions between a hill tribe based on the Lisu, an anthropologist who sets up permanent residence with them, and missionaries who have worked in the golden triangle region for generations. There’s a murder mystery and a mysterious cross-cultural romance, a dysfunctional-family back story and an expatriot’s-dilemma frame story, and through it all, Berlinski demonstrates a depth of knowledge about mult
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Jun 19, 2009
Siri
rated it:
I didn't have the highest of expectations for this book after reading mixed reviews, but after seeing it as a recommended book at a nice little bookshop and requesting it through the library, I decided to go ahead and give it a try anyway and I'm glad I did. I admit that the narrator in this novel having the same name as the author is strange, but his name only comes up a couple times throughout the entire book. The narrator is working as a journalist in Thailand and happens upon a story of an
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Jul 24, 2011
Jule
rated it:
I thought 'wow'. I always just had a dim feeling of what anthropology eventually was all about. So reading Berlinski's novel was a great intro to the daily life of an anthropologist. I felt it a good intro to the art and methods of anthropology. Further, this books holds one a many surprises and caught my curiosity ever more the further i got into the book. I developed great sympathy for all its characters. I admit the part where Berlinksi describes the family history of the Walkers was a bit to
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